How to Setup Outlook with your SMTP Server Settings to Send Emails
How to setup Outlook with your SMTP Server Settings to Send Emails? Outlook is a popular personal information manager that is mainly used for its email account management functionality. What makes the desktop version of Outlook so well liked is its seamless integration with the Microsoft Office ecosystem.
It also allows you to easily add and remove email accounts. Additionally, it gives you a wide variety of ways to control your email messages. Whether it’s through filters, flags, macros, or other rules. Hence, users may prefer it over Microsoft’s Windows pre-installed mail app. Nevertheless, Microsoft Outlook comes with a diverse array of options for customization. For instance, it allows you to add personalized SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 settings to send emails. Nevertheless, this guide will focus chiefly on how to set up outlook with your SMTP server settings to send emails.
Let’s start with our tutorial blog about How to setup Outlook with your SMTP Server Settings to Send Emails?
Understanding SMTP Servers
For instance, Yahoo Mail uses smtp.mail.yahoo.com, while Google Mail (Gmail) uses smtp.gmail.com. Your mail client will typically assign mail transmissions to port 465. To learn more, you can visit Cloud Infrastructure’s detailed guide on the SMTP Protocol.
Send Email Using SMTP
SMTP is like a postman for your emails and the delivery agent is an IMAP and POP. How is that? Firstly when sending an email you connect to SMTP server, which will carry the email, whilst determining the receiver and the domain of the receiver. If the receiver domain is the same domain as yours, the mail is sent immediately. But if the receiver is using a different domain, the email is handed over to IMAP or POP to sort it out and deliver the mail.
Deliver Email with IMAP or POP
Next in How to setup outlook with your SMTP server settings to send emails is to create a SMTP server.
How to Create a Personalized SMTP server?
How to set up outlook with your SMTP server settings to send emails? – Before we answer this question, let’s explore ways you can create and run a local SMTP server. By now, you might have guessed that you don’t need an account with an established webmail client to send mail messages. While businesses are more likely to build and run local email servers, ordinary individuals can do it too.
There are several reasons why you’d want to do this. For instance, you may be worried about your privacy or you may be a web or software developer who needs to create a personalized SMTP server for your program. Alternatively, you could be doing it for educational purposes – to see how SMTP servers work.
There are a few ways to do this. However, this section will primarily focus on building an SMTP server using Windows.
Setup SMTP Server on Localhost on Windows
The following short tutorial will show you how to set up an SMTP server on your local system. You will be able to send mail messages using this local server. It will utilize a custom ID.
Step1: Download and install SMTP Server For Windows
You will use hMailServer for this tutorial. It’s a free open source email server for Microsoft Windows. Setting it up is straightforward. Nevertheless, the first thing you must do is download the latest version of hMailServer for Windows.
Secondly, please run the setup files once the download is complete. Make your way through the installation wizard by following the prompts and clicking on the Next button. You must select the Full Installation when you encounter the components selection screen of the wizard. It will install both the email server and administrative tools.
The wizard will then ask you to choose a database type. You can choose to use a database engine that you’ve previously installed (such as SQLite) or you can elect to use a built in database engine. If you choose the latter, hMailServer will install Microsoft SQL Compact.
Next, the installation will then ask you where you would like to place the application’s shortcut. You can use the default settings on this page. The next screen will prompt you for a password. Enter your password and confirm it. Make a note of your password as you will need it later. Once that’s done, you can click on the Next button.
You will then be prompted to complete the installation. The setup should not take long. Make sure to tick the checkbox labeled Run hMailServer Administrator on the final screen before clicking on the finish button.
Step 2: Add a domain for your hMailServer
In this step you will be able to use the hMailServer Administrator to configure and connect your local email server. It also allows you to create, edit and remove servers. Additionally, it will allow you to set the server to automatically connect upon Windows start up. You should consider ticking the checkbox.
Nonetheless, click on your localhost mail server from the list and then click on the Connect button. You will be prompted to insert your password. Enter the password you configured during the initial hMailServer setup process. You should be greeted by the full hMailServer Administrator screen for the localhost. You must click on the Add Domain button.
The next screen will ask you to enter a domain name. You can name your domain anything you want. Make sure to tick the checkbox marked Enabled when before clicking on the Save button.
Your domain should appear under the Domains section in the left tree panel. Next, you must add an account to your domain.
Step 3: Add a user account
Click on the Accounts folder in the tree. Next, click on the Add… button.
The above steps should produce an account configuration screen. Add a username to the Address field and a password to the Password field. Once you’re done, you can click on the Save button.
Later, you’ll be able to use this screen to configure the other details and settings of your account. For instance, you’ll be able to set rules, a signature, link it to other accounts, etc. But let’s keep it simple for now.
You should see your new account under the Accounts folder once you click on the Save button. The application allows you to create additional accounts. However, it won’t be necessary for the steps in the rest of this tutorial.
How to Setup Outlook with your SMTP Server Settings to Send Emails? – this section will answer this question.
Configure Outlook To Send Emails Using Your SMTP Server Settings
Note: this guide will focus on the latest desktop versions of Microsoft Outlook.
- Run Microsoft Office (if it’s not already running).
- Click on File (or press Alt + F on your keyboard).
- Next, click on the Info tab in the left panel.
- Click on Add Account. Outlook will display a dialog requesting your email address.
- Enter the account email address you set up earlier
- Next, click on the Advanced options drop-down control.
- Click on Let me set up my account manually.
- Next, click on the Connect button.
- The next screen will ask you what type of server you want to use for incoming mail. Pick the IMAP option.
- The first thing you must do is edit the server settings for incoming mail. Enter localhost next to the Server text field.
- You can keep the Port as the default value (143).
- Select None as your Encryption method.
- Leave the box labeled Require logon using Secure Password Authentication (SPA) blank.
- Next, you must add the SMTP server settings for outgoing mail. Once again, insert localhost as your Server.
- Insert 587 as your Port number.
- Leave everything else as is.
- Click on the Next Button.
- The next screen will ask you for your mail account password. Enter it in and click on the Connect button.
If you’ve set everything up correctly, Outlook should display a dialog with a success message similar to this one:
You can add another account if you want to or click on the Done button. You can then test your server by sending and receiving messages to it using Outlook.
Great effort! We have learned how to setup Outlook with your SMTP server settings to send emails.
How to Setup Outlook with your SMTP Server Settings to Send Emails Conclusion
It’s quite apparent that Microsoft Outlook will remain the most popular information management and desktop email client solution for years to come. According to Litmus’s February 2022 Email Client Market Share Report, Microsoft Outlook had the largest market share (53.3%) of desktop email clients.
In this guide, we explored how to setup Outlook with your SMTP server settings to send emails. As you can tell, Outlook makes this process incredibly easy. The hardest part is configuring a personalized localhost SMTP server. Again, hMailServer is one of the best solutions for this use case. Furthermore, the latest version of hMailServer doesn’t require you to configure your own SQL database. It will install and configure a micro version of the SQL server database for you. Nonetheless, if you have any queries or corrections, please leave them in the comment section below. As always, thank you for reading.
