This morning I found out that Microsoft was rolling out a preview of the new Outlook.com. If you currently have a Live account with Microsoft you should be able to access the preview. I used Outlook.com for about an hour this morning and I love it. I love it so much I am thinking of migrating everything (and I mean everything) from Google and Gmail over to Microsoft. I think once Outlook.com integrates with Skype I will take the time to get the migration done. Until then I will just keep finding excuses to use things like SkyDrive instead of Google Docs. Eventually I’ll just stop using the Google stuff and the migration will be less painful.
I decided to take the time today to secure the SQLRockstar@outlook.com email address. All I needed to do was to create an alias for my existing Live email account. Naturally I want to grab a handful of aliases but all of my favorites were taken. I tried to grab outlook@outlook.com (who wouldn’t want that, right?), and spam@outlook.com (because I’d love to hand that email address to those entities that I know are going to spam me), and even bacon@outlook.com (obviously). After hitting the wall with those I got down to business with SQLRockstar.
The process for creating an alias was easy enough, but only if you knew where to look. I decided to blog about the process in case others were having the same issue I was initially.
Creating An Outlook.com Email Alias
The reason I want to create an alias is to reserve the branding for SQLRockstar. Although it is unlikely that someone else would try to grab that name (although I can’t get that gamer tag for Xbox for some reason that Xbox support cannot explain to me), I like to reserve such things when I have the chance. If you have a brand or name you would like to reserve then you should consider creating an alias as well.
The first step is to click on the little cog wheel type icon in the upper right of Outlook.com, and then select ‘More mail settings’:
Next, you want to find the link for ‘Create a Outlook alias’ (I’m hoping they fix that little grammar mistake):
Then, you enter in the alias you want to use as well as the domain:
And you are done. Well, sort of. I mean the alias is created, but you can’t see them anywhere on the Outlook.com page. I created a handful of aliases in an effort to root out where they could be hiding. I eventually found them and figured I should share that with you as well.
How To View Your Outlook.com Email Aliases
It took me a while to find where my outlook.com email aliases were listed. I stumbled upon them, really, as I bounced around my account settings and profile settings. When I eventually found them it made sense to me that they would be there, but it was not intuitive to me at first to think to look in that area.
What you want to do is edit your Live profile. Click on the upper right of the Outlook.com screen, then select ‘Edit profile’:
You will be taken to the “old” Live page, and there you want to find the link on the left that says simply ‘Your contact info’:
And here is where the magic happens. There is a dropdown listbox for your choice of personal email address. My aliases are displayed there.
My guess is that as Microsoft moves Outlook.com from “preview” mode to RTM, it won’t be as difficult to see a list of your accounts, including aliases.
But I’ve been wrong before.
How To Delete Outlook.com Aliases
I don’t know. I can’t seem to find any way to delete an aliase once it has been created. Here’s hoping someone finds a way and posts it in the comments below.
[UPDATED] Issue With Outlook.com and Office365 Users
If you have Office365 account, you can’t use it to log into Outlook.com. You could say that you might not really need this, but since many people keep separate work and personal addresses, this might be an issue for them.
If you try to access Outlook.com using your Office365 account you will see an error message stating that you’re doing it wrong:
There does not seem to be any workaround, but here’s hoping that at some point in the future you will be able to integrate these accounts.
If I come across additional issues and solutions I will try to add them to this post.
Excellent article, Tom!
Thanks Kevin! It was your tweet this morning that prompted me to even look at outlook.com, thanks for mentioning about grabbing an alias.
I don’t think I can yet – I have too many rules and tags. I guess these would be equivalent to folders and/or categories. While the design is great, I use Google Apps for my domain and manage the accounts for some apps with that. I’m glad Microsoft is offering an alternative which is very compelling – it should definitely keep Google on its toes. Microsoft has some of the best UX in the industry – it is head and shoulders above Google and Apple – hopefully they’ll get the feature mix and pricing right too…
Agreed. I can’t move just yet, but I can start taking steps to make the migration easier…and if Microsoft makes a few tools to help with the migration then it will likely happen sooner.
To Delete – Go to accounts (account.live.com) click on notifications then manage email preferences… Then you’ll see the list of aliases with a remove link under each.
Wonderful! Thanks Mike! I was able to delete one, and then I tried to add one to take it’s place but I am still getting the error message that I have “created too many”. Hopefully that will get cleared up soon.
if I’m not mistaken I think you can add 5 a year.
Not great, I know. Don’t shoot the messenger!
Whoa! Okay, who can I contact at Microsoft to get that reset for me? Send a note to outlook.com support?
Deletion of alias this way appears to only remove it from list of addresses for notifications; the alias, unfortunately, remains functionally listed in the Outlook Mail view.
you can delete aliases: In the Hotmail/Live interface, click on your name in the top right corner and select Optiond. On this page, select Email Address under the Accounts section. Voila.
Perfect, thanks!
Video might be useful for new outlook user who wants to know how to create and delete email alias
Great article – thanks for sharing. I have an xbox live id that I was able to use to log in and check it out and I agree it looks awesome. But I didn’t see a calendar. Am I missing something? Without a calendar, how do you leave Google behind?
Todd,
I know Hotmail has a calendar. In the upper left click on the ‘Outlook’ icon, and you should see a list that contains ‘Calendar’.
Thanks Tom for the reply! I checked it out and the calendar is there just as you said. I will definitely dig into this further as it really looks like a great alternative to Google tools. Thanks again for taking the time to share…