Microsoft / Outlook.com have silently removed connected accounts from outlook.com on July 1st, 2024.
TL;DR: Connected accounts are gone and cannot be fixed 🙁
I only got aware of it as some people told me that my eMails were marked as “unverified sender” on their side. And indeed, eMails were suddenly sent via the outlook email server. Before I sent the mails through the SMTP server of my hosting provider.
Searching the reason was a bit cumbersome as I didn’t even know which search term to use. Then suddenly I stumbled across some posts & news confirming that the feature was just .. gone (like here, here, here and here).
That means I
- can use @outlook.com as sender domain
- must switch to another provider.
Goodbye Outlook.com then. I simply don’t want to send from @outlook.com but want to use my own domain name.
Step 1: Alternatives
I literally had just two requirements:
- be as convenient as GMail
- VERY low maintenance (if self-hosted). I mean: like WordPress that auto-updates itself and that’s it.
The webmail interface of my hosting provider was just a bit too inconvenient.
For self-hosting, I didn’t find a solution that met my requirements.
The winner is: GMail!
Step 2: Migrate
About 13.000 eMails in a couple of (nested) folders waited to be migrated. But don’t worry, it was rather easy. (I’m writing this now from my memories – I hope I didn’t miss a step)
- Gmail: delete all eMails (well not necessary, I just wanted to start clean)
- Gmail: make sure IMAP is activated (Settings > redirect, POP & IMAP)
- my Provider: change the eMail forward to my gmail address
- Outlook.com: set auto-forward emails to your Gmail account.
Gmail: using the gmail-outlook import(didn’t work for me)- download & install MailstoreHome (free for personal usage)
- MailstoreHome: create an archive (= download mails, that’s also a nice backup)
- [Mailstore: TRY using the gMail upload – I had the impression that the folders weren’t created]
- MailstoreHome: create the upload connection to
imap.gmail.com. Make sure to increase the timeout (I just set 3000s) and start uploading. - Wait … Wait .. Wait
- Gmail: mails are now imported under the Label
Mailstore > ...@outlook.com > all folders - Gmail: change all labels to be on the root level:
Click on the 3 dots besides the label > edit > uncheck the box for being a nested label
That should work for all except “sent”. I renamed it to sent_import.
- Download & install Thunderbird.
- Thunderbird: connect to your GMail-account
- Thunderbird: open the sent_import folder
- Thunderbird: move all mails from sent_import to Gmail’s sent-folder.
- Gmail: delete all labels you don’t need any more
- Gmail: add the SMTP of your domain: Settings > Accounts & Import > Send as
- Optional: uninstall Thunderbird and MailstoreHome
And that should have been the whole task. I hope it helped.