Multiple MS e-mail accounts under my single Outlook.com address

[lordofpi]

Okay, so either this is some conspiracy on MS's part, they are completely inept, or I am just an idiot today. I am in the process of migrating completely to Outlook.com (see my earlier thread, questioning whether I should do this), and I am stymied by how to bring all of my other e-mail addresses under my primary account's (@outlook.com) umbrella.

Up until now, I have had my one Gmail account serving as a focal point for my 5 other [email protected] and [email protected] addresses (it's a mixture). I check that Gmail account and only that, and I send and receive from the other accounts through Gmail. It's one-stop shopping, and, as far as I'm concerned, it is totally necessary in this day and age.

For the migration, I want to stop Gmail from checking these other accounts, and instead I want them all to go directly to my [email protected]. However, when I try to tell Outlook.com to use one of my accounts as a "Send and receive", it balks, suggesting I should try "linking" these accounts instead (which MS has disabled!). I then thought I was supposed to try adding them all as Aliases, but it would let me do that either, stating "This email address is part of a reserved domain such as live.com, hotmail.com, or msn.com. Please enter a different email address."

I am exasperated at how hard this is. Fellow Surfacers, please tell me I'm missing something.

 

[lostlogik]

I've read this in haste and may have got it wrong but I had a similar setup. I have set up one primary outlook address, under which I have created aliases, from which I can send and receive emails. I then set up filter rules such that emails are filtered into the appropriate mailbox as required. So, I have "[email protected]" as primary and then sub1@, sub2, sub3@ etc.

So when someone sends to [email protected] it goes to acc1@ and then gets filtered into sub2@, appearing in the inbox of sub2@. I can reply to the sender and it will appear sent from sub2@ (provided I do it from within the Mail app on my Surface or from the web at outlook.com. If I use Outlook it will be sent from acc1@)

In my old Google accounts I set up forwarders to appropriate new outlook addresses.

Hope that is what you wanted.

 

[lordofpi]

Thanks for the response. I think I follow you. Aliases seem to be the way to go then.

My problem, I guess, arises from me wanting to use preexisting *@live.com or *@outlook.com addresses as my aliases.

For whatever strange reason, it won't let me do that. Did you run into any similar problem, or did you -create- those addresses when you made the aliases?

 

[lostlogik]

Ah, see your problem. if it's a pre-existing @live/outlook address then no, you can't use it. I created new aliases, which I use as email addresses. the beauty of this is I can delete and create new ones if and when the spamming gets too great, thus protecting my main email address.

 

[rabilancia]

I solved the problem of pre-existing @live @msn and @hotmail accounts by individually logging into those accounts and the setting up automatic forwarding to my primary account.

I hope that can work for you too.
Rich

 

[lordofpi]

Hi Rich. Thanks. Can I assume then that you can't send mail from these secondary accounts then, without logging into them? MS must have some sort of solution for this. Perhaps I ought to contact them?

 

[Omni]

I don't use multiple outlook addresses but I'm having great success in using send-receive accounts in outlook. Works really well and filters spam which was becoming a real issue on some of my address.

 

[rabilancia]

That is correct, I am unable to send emails from those other accounts. Sorry for the delay in responding.

 

[lordofpi]

This is an example of things that frustrate me now and again. It's as if I am punished for having had MS email accounts. If all my secondary and tertiary account were from third parties, this would work seamlessly.

I'm going to contact support to see if they have anything helpful in the issue and post back here. Thanks to everyone for their comments!

 

[lordofpi]

Okay, problem solved. It has the hint of a workaround, but this is the official MS way for doing what we want. I did this in the reverse order of the way the MS page says in order to minimize the amount of logging in and out. By the way, I think this might be what you were trying to tell me above, Rich. Sorry if I misunderstood you.

First, I logged into my primary outlook.com account, went to More mail settings and Your email accounts. In there, I added each of my secondary MS e-mail addresses (i.e.., my accounts in the live.com and outlook.com domains) as a Send-only account, not as a Send-and-receive account. MS will ping each of your secondary accounts with a confirmation e-mail that requires you to open a link. I then logged into each secondary account, clicked on the confirmation link in the e-mail MS sent, and then after that was done went to the gear icon and selected More mail settings and then Email forwarding and entered in my primary account as the destination address. Essentially this is just a manual way of doing what they should have allowed anyway -- a send-and-receive of an MS e-mail account. It's silly that this is necessary, but at least it works, and there is no message saying "Sent on behalf of..." as there used to be back in Outlook.com's early times. After this was over, I just added my old Gmail account as a Send-and-receive account, the easy way of doing things. I then disabled all of my old pulling of messages from other accounts, since everything was now connected directly to my primary outlook.com account.

Here is the link to the MS guide to doing just what I did. Thanks again everyone for helping me out.


Edit/Post-script: Any options for export/importing old e-mails from Gmail to Outlook.com now that Trueswitch is gone?

 

[rabilancia]

lordofpi,

Yes, similar to what I did. In my case I did not choose to do the first part (Send only account setup) as I no longer need to send from those accounts.

Glad that you got it working!