Get email in Outlook with Office 365

After you add your domain to Office 365 operated by 21Vianet, you can send and receive email using an email address, like fred@fourthcoffee.com, in the Office 365 portal. If you also want to use Office 365 email with your Outlook program on your desktop, you can do that too.

1. On your desktop, open Outlook. For example, Windows Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Outlook 2013.

2. Click File > Account Information > Add Account.

3. Select Email Account, and then type your name and your Office 365 email address (it's also your user ID) and password.

4. Click Next. Outlook checks with Office 365 and sets up your mailbox.

5. Follow the rest of the instructions to finish adding your account to Outlook.

Tip:  You can also set up Outlook to work with your original partner.onmschina.cn email address, if you don't have a custom domain or you're just trying out the service.

Before you set it up, make sure your Office 365 email is working

For Office 365 email to work with Outlook, it first has to be set up correctly in the service.

• If you're using a Small Business plan and you chose to have Office 365 manage your DNS records:    When you added your custom domain, did you finish all the steps in the wizard, including completing the process to change your name server (NS) records to Office 365? That final step allows Office 365 to set up email with your domain for you.

• If you're managing your own DNS records:    Did you set up the MX and CNAME records for Exchange Online at your DNS hosting provider? They're required for email to work. You also need to create those records if you're using a Small Business plan and you skipped the last wizard step, (Learn how to set up the email records at many popular domain registrars.)

• If you're having trouble getting email to work in the portal:    If Office 365 email doesn't work in the portal, it probably won't work in Outlook on your desktop either. Track down the Office 365 issues first (see the steps in the Troubleshoot problems section below), and then set up Outlook with your Office 365 email address.

Use Outlook for email with different email addresses

You might want to set up Outlook with two or more email addresses (or accounts). Then you can set an option so that you're prompted, each time you run Outlook, to choose one.

1. If Outlook is running, close it first.

2. Go to Windows Start, and click Control Panel > Mail. (In Category view, User Accounts> Mail.)

3. In the Profiles section, click Show Profiles.

4. Select Prompt for a profile to be used.

Troubleshoot problems

• Follow step-by-step instructions to set up email accounts in different versions of Outlook. You can use Outlook 2013, 2010, or 2007 with Office 365.