Outlook.com & Desktop Outlook

Here’s a quick tip for anyone with an Outlook.com account that’s been upgraded to the new Outlook.com system. How do you know if you’ve been upgraded? Your URL will be https://outlook.live.com/owa/ in a browser and you won’t be redirected back to the old system on https://mail.live.com.

Still with me? Good. So, you’ve got an upgraded account and everything works just like it did before the upgrade. The process is fairly seamless. Many people don’t know that they’ve been migrated. But we want more than just what we had before, don’t we? So, let’s upgrade how we access Outlook.com

The way you used to connect desktop Outlook with Outlook.com was via ActiveSync. That’s a good protocol, but it’s not as full-featured as MAPI-HTTP is. With this upgrade, you can now use MAPI-HTTP just by removing your old ActiveSync connections to Outlook.com with desktop Outlook and re-creating them. They’ll use the best protocol possible, which would be MAPI-HTTP if you are running a current version of desktop Outlook.

What does this do for you? Well, with a MAPI-HTTP connection, you can add applications into Outlook.com via the Outlook Store, and they will install into desktop Outlook! Yes, you can have your Starbucks for Outlook installed, and it will work in desktop Outlook. This won’t happen over an ActiveSync connection.

How cool is that?