When consulting the Microsoft help pages, enabling IMAP for your Office 365 or Microsoft Exchange account can seem quite challenging.
➡️ But don’t worry, in this tutorial, we’ll quickly walk you through all necessary steps to enable IMAP for your Microsoft mailbox!
Common Reasons to Enable IMAP for MS 365
Enabling IMAP for your Office 365 mailbox is a common tasks. If IMAP is disabled for your account, you cannot access your emails using the IMAP email protocol. This is especially inconvenient if you wish to use certain email clients or are planning to perform an email migration from or to a Microsoft mailbox.
Reasons to enable IMAP for Office 365 / Microsoft Exchange mailboxes:
- you wish to use an email client that does not support the MAPI protocol
- you want to connect your mailbox with a software that uses IMAP
(e.g. an email marketing software) - you want to migrate email data from an IMAP mailbox to Office 365
- you wish to migrate your emails to Office 365
- you’re planning a complete Office 365 migration
AND IMAP is disabled for your mailbox (which applies only for a few accounts, see below).
MS Account Types:Do you need to enable IMAP for your Microsoft account?
First, the good news:
By default, IMAP is enabled for all Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange mailboxes.
However, it is possible that IMAP is disabled for your account. For example, this is the case if your IT admin or email provider disabled IMAP for your Microsoft account.
Using a Microsoft Office Home & Student edition or email address ending with @outlook.com?
✅ In this case, there is no need to enable IMAP as the protocol is active by default. In fact, for these accounts, you can’t disable IMAP at all.Are you using an MS 365 mailbox that is provided by your university or an educational institute?
For these account types, you usually do not have the necessary admin privileges to change the Office 365 IMAP configuration. Therefore, please contact your IT department and ask them to enable IMAP for your mailbox.
Is your account management by your IT department / IT administrator?
To enable IMAP for your Microsoft Exchange / MS 365 account, you need admin rights. When working with a mailbox that is provided by your organisation or IT department, you usually don’t have the necessary privileges. In this case, please contact your sys admin and ask them to enable IMAP for your email address!
Exchange Admin Center:
How to enable IMAP for your Office 365 / MS Exchange Mailbox
Enable IMAP for your MS 365 / MS Exchange account using the Exchange admin center in only five quick steps:
1. Log in to the Exchange admin center at https://admin.exchange.microsoft.com using your Microsoft admin account
2. In the left sidebar, go to Recipients and select Mailboxes
3. Click on the mailbox you wish to enable IMAP for
4. In the settings overlay, scroll down and click on Manage email apps settings (in the tab “General”)
5. In the “Mange settings for email apps” pane, enable IMAP and click on Save
Repeat these steps for all mailboxes you wish to enable IMAP for (or select all mailboxes you need to change and click on “Bulk Edit” to change the email app settings at once).
🥳 That’s all! You successfully enabled IMAP for your Office 365 or Microsoft Exchange account!
MS 365 Admin Center
How to enable IMAP using the Microsoft 365 admin center
As an alternative to the Exchange admin center, you can also use the Microsoft 365 admin center to enable IMAP:
1. Log in to the Microsoft 365 admin center at https://admin.microsoft.com using your Microsoft admin account
2. In the left navigation bar, select Users and click on Active users
3. Click on the display name of the mailbox you wish to change
4. Now click on the tab Mail and select Manage email apps
5. Check the option IMAP and click on Save changes
Frequent Questions
When Enabling IMAP for Office 365 / Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes:
What is IMAP and why should I enable it for my Microsoft account?
IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is an email protocol that allows you to access and manage your emails. You need to enable IMAP if you wish to use your mailbox with an email client or an email software that does not support the MAPI protocol.
Furthermore, you need to enable IMAP if you wish to perform an email migration from or to an MS 365 / Microsoft Exchange account using an email migration tool like MailJerry.
How do I know if IMAP is disabled for my Microsoft account?
By default, IMAP is enabled for all Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange mailboxes. However, some system administrators disable IMAP for all mailboxes, therefore you might need to enable IMAP for your mailbox. To review the current status of your mailbox, follow the tutorial above and check if IMAP is already enabled.
➡️ For all Microsoft Home & Student accounts and accounts ending with @outlook.com, IMAP is always enabled.
I do not have access to my / my organisation’s Microsoft admin account. Can I enable IMAP anyway?
Unfortunately, no. You need admin privileges for your Microsoft account to be allowed to enable IMAP. Therefore, in this case, you need to contact your IT admin or email provider.
I am using an Office 365 mailbox provided by my university. How can I enable IMAP?
If you’re using an Office 365 mailbox provided by your university or educational institute, you may not have the necessary admin privileges to enable IMAP yourself.
Log in to the Exchange admin center and follow the steps described above. If you do not see the same settings as depicted in the screenshots, please contact your IT department and ask them to enable IMAP for your mailbox.
Can I enable IMAP for multiple mailboxes at once?
Yes, you can enable IMAP for multiple mailboxes simultaneously by selecting all the mailboxes you wish to change in the Exchange admin center and clicking on “Bulk Edit” to change the email app settings.
