Setup Outlook 2003 with IMAP

# Posted Dec 17, 2:16pm

This article was written for Outlook 2003, but it should be usable with slight modifications with other versions of Outlook. You should also be aware that versions of Outlook prior to Outlook 2003 didn’t handle frequent disconnections from the network very gracefully, so if you’re a laptop user with an earlier version of Outlook you probably want to set it up to retrieve mail via POP.

This article will walk you through setting up Outlook 2003 with IMAP.

First, you’ll want to open up Outlook 2003, then select Tools | Email Accounts, like so:

We’re setting up a new account, so choose “Add a new e-mail account”:

On the Server Type page, make sure to choose “IMAP” as the server type:

On Internet Email settings, enter in the following information (replacing “example.com” with your domain name):

Now we need to setup outgoing email. To do this, click on the “More Settings” button, where you’ll be presented with the following screen:

Click on the “Outgoing Server” tab, and check the box that says “My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication)”. Use the default radio button box of “Use same settings as my incoming mail server”:

Almost done. Now we want to change the port that the outgoing mail goes out on. We want to do this for two reasons: the first is to prevent your outgoing mail from being scanned by the Ideanode mailserver for viruses and spam. The second is that many Internet Service Providers block you from sending mail to port 25 on mailservers that aren’t theirs—they do this in an attempt to stop spammers that directly connect to other people’s mail servers direct and inject spam. Click the “Advanced” tab, then change the “Outgoing server (SMTP):” port to 587, from the default 25:

Click “OK,” and now we’re back to the Email Accounts page. Click “Next>”.

Click “Finish.”

If you’re using IMAP, you probably also want to configure your message deletion settings so that messages you delete are immediately removed from your inbox. All is detailed in the How to Delete IMAP Messages in Outlook support article.