Can someone please explain outlook?!?

[Christopher Lindsay]

I have a Gmail account and I figured it would be better to close it and switch to using outlook but apparently I was wrong. I did a Bing search to try to sign up with outlook and somehow I already have an outlook account automatically attached to my Microsoft account. I even have an inbox with an email from the outlook team. There's nothing at all explaining how any of this works, what my email address is, how is it all connected, how do make an @outlook email address or anything related at all. Can someone please fill me in because even the help and support doesn't explain much of anything at all.

 

[Jas00555]

re:

Do you have a Windows Phone? You may have created one when you activated it. You need one to download apps.

 

[Maaz Mansori]

re:

If your Microsoft Account is a Hotmail.com, live.com, or outlook.com, it should be a functioning mailbox and the e-mail address would be the same as your Microsoft Account. If you used an outside e-mail address as your Microsoft Account, the mailbox will be nonfunctional although it might show an e-mail from the Outlook team anyway. It's a little strange. If this is the case, there should be an option at the bottom to create an alias when you log into outlook.com with your Microsoft account, so you can just use that as your e-mail address and it will have the same password.

 

[Christopher Lindsay]

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Do you have a Windows Phone? You may have created one when you activated it. You need one to download apps.

Yeah I have a 1520.

 

[Christopher Lindsay]

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If your Microsoft Account is a Hotmail.com, live.com, or outlook.com, it should be a functioning mailbox and the e-mail address would be the same as your Microsoft Account. If you used an outside e-mail address as your Microsoft Account, the mailbox will be nonfunctional although it might show an e-mail from the Outlook team anyway. It's a little strange. If this is the case, there should be an option at the bottom to create an alias when you log into outlook.com with your Microsoft account, so you can just use that as your e-mail address and it will have the same password.

My email is a Gmail account. It's also the same thing I use to log in to my Microsoft account. An alias is not the same as an actual email address? Because right now It says my alias is my Gmail account but there is no Gmail emails in my inbox. I just want to sign up for an outlook email address. I'm not exactly sure what this is so advance.

 

[Maaz Mansori]

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My email is a Gmail account. It's also the same thing I use to log in to my Microsoft account. An alias is not the same as an actual email address? Because right now It says my alias is my Gmail account but there is no Gmail emails in my inbox. I just want to sign up for an outlook email address. I'm not exactly sure what this is so advance.

What you have is a non-functional Outlook mailbox. Outlook does not have the capability of receiving mail sent to your Gmail address unless you have the e-mail forwarded there, but in order to do that, you first need to create an alias e-mail address with Outlook.com and then configure Gmail to forward e-mails to that address. The other option, of course, is to just create a whole new Outlook.com account. However, if you plan on getting rid of your Gmail address, it might be better to do the alias because then you can make the alias your primary login and then you won't have to use the Gmail address as your Microsoft account login anymore.

 

[Christopher Lindsay]

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What you have is a non-functional Outlook mailbox. Outlook does not have the capability of receiving mail sent to your Gmail address unless you have the e-mail forwarded there, but in order to do that, you first need to create an alias e-mail address with Outlook.com and then configure Gmail to forward e-mails to that address. The other option, of course, is to just create a whole new Outlook.com account. However, if you plan on getting rid of your Gmail address, it might be better to do the alias because then you can make the alias your primary login and then you won't have to use the Gmail address as your Microsoft account login anymore.

How do I go about creating a new outlook account under my Microsoft account?

 

[Christopher Lindsay]

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I'm still confused on the difference between an alias and a regular email address.

 

[Maaz Mansori]

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How do I go about creating a new outlook account under my Microsoft account?

A new account would be just that, a new account. It would be separate from your existing Microsoft account.

 

[Maaz Mansori]

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I'm still confused on the difference between an alias and a regular email address.

It's a little confusing to explain. If you have a Microsoft account with a Microsoft e-mail address such as outlook.com, hotmail.com, or live.com and you add an alias to that, the alias will receive the same e-mail as your other e-mail does. Essentially you can use the alias as a regular e-mail address. If your Microsoft account is a gmail.com or another outside address, this can't be used as an Outlook e-mail; you need to create an alias which will essentially become your regular e-mail address as anything sent to the Gmail will still go to your Google account. You can, of course, have your Google e-mail forwarded to your Outlook e-mail address (in this case the alias). Also if you log into your Microsoft account with your Gmail address, you will see the e-mail sent to this alias (but not e-mail sent to the Gmail account unless you separately had that forwarded to your alias). This is why it is called an alias. It's a little difficult to explain if you're not familiar with how it works.

 

[Chris_Kez]

I went through this myself. I used my Yahoo account to to create my Microsoft account. As the other poster said you just need to log into outlook.com with your current MS account (username "insertname@gmail.com" or whatever) and create an alias (i.e. a second/alternative name). This new name will be "insertname@outlook.com". This is your alias. It can receive email sent to "insertname@outlook.com". .

Once that is done you can go back to your phone, into settings> accounts and add "insertname@outlook" as an email account.

None of this has anything to do with your Gmail account. But, you can go a step further and set the alias to be your primary name. Then you would no longer enter "insertname@gmail.com" as your MS account username. You could forward your Gmail to the new outlook address and that's that. If you really don't want to ever visit Gmail again for whatever reason you even migrate your mail archive over to outlook.

 

[Christopher Lindsay]

re:

I went through this myself. I used my Yahoo account to to create my Microsoft account. As the other poster said you just need to log into outlook.com with your current MS account (username "insertname@gmail.com" or whatever) and create an alias (i.e. a second/alternative name). This new name will be "insertname@outlook.com". This is your alias. It can receive email sent to "insertname@outlook.com". .

Once that is done you can go back to your phone, into settings> accounts and add "insertname@outlook" as an email account.

None of this has anything to do with your Gmail account. But, you can go a step further and set the alias to be your primary name. Then you would no longer enter "insertname@gmail.com" as your MS account username. You could forward your Gmail to the new outlook address and that's that. If you really don't want to ever visit Gmail again for whatever reason you even migrate your mail archive over to outlook.

Thanks that makes much more sense to me. Outlook seems to be better than Gmail to me but I think they should establish some sort of introduction video or something like that explaining it. I had no idea all of this office stuff even existed online.