Thunderbird Setup: Outlook

See the main article for complete info. You can also get to the other services here.

Add Account Using OAuth

Now we’re going to connect Thunderbird to your Outlook account. For more help, see this link from Microsoft. This process uses something called OAuth. For this to work, you apparently need to tell Thunderbird to accept all cookies (see instructions in main article).

  1. In Thunderbird, go to File > New Account… – this should bring up the “Account Hub”
  2. Enter your name, though it doesn’t really matter.
  3. Enter your full, correct email address (e.g., “joe.smith@outlook.com”)
  4. Click the “Continue” button – it will ask you to log in, possibly in a secondary pop-up window.
  5. Use your Outlook.com email address (login, ID) and password.

That should do it. You should see the account show up in Thunderbird and your emails should begin downloading. But if you can’t get the easy way to work, see the next section.

NOTE: I did have a weird experience where it asked me to log in again… I had to close that (ignore it), and then it was fine. It’s a little flaky.

If OAuth Login Fails

If the above worked, skip this section.

Sometimes the OAuth login is flaky. You might try it a couple times before giving up. But if you can’t get that way to work, you’ll need to try to “old” way: creating an app password. Use these instructions.

NOTE: This is probably already turned on, but check to be sure you have enabled IMAP on your Outlook account. This page also has some of the same info as below.

  1. In Thunderbird, go to File > New Account… – this should bring up the “Account Hub”
  2. Enter your name, though it doesn’t really matter.
  3. Enter your full, correct email address (e.g., “joe.smith@outlook.com”)
  4. Click “Manual Configuration” under your email address (instead of “Continue, as we did above).
  5. On “Incoming server settings”:
    • Protocol: IMAP
    • Hostname: outlook.office365.com
    • Port: 993 (should auto-set security to “SSL/TLS”)
    • Auth method: Normal password
    • Username: your email address
    • Next
  6. On “Outgoing server settings”:
    • Protocol: SMTP
    • Hostname: smtp-mail.outlook.com
    • Port: 587
    • Auth method: Normal password
    • Username: your email address
    • Click the “Test” button at the lower left. If all goes well, you’ll get a green success message; if not, double check all of your IMAP and SMTP settings carefully.
    • Click “Continue” now, which will take you to a password page. Pause here and go to the next step in your web browser.
  7. You’re going to need to create what’s called an “app password” before you go further. Follow Microsofts’s instructions below. You can give this special password a name – I would call it “Thunderbird”.
    • Create a Microsoft app password using your web browser.
    • Store this password somewhere safe, like a password manager.
    • Note that once we complete this process we’ll delete this app password. Until then, anyone who gets hold of it may be able to access your email account.
  8. Return to Thunderbird app. Enter your new app password in the “Password” box and click Continue.

At this point you should start seeing your folders and emails appear. You’ll see some status messages at the very bottom edge of the Thunderbird app. You can also go to Tools > Activity Manager to see a full list of what’s going on. You can periodically “clear” the list to reduce clutter.

NOTE: I had some weird behavior where Thunderbird would ask me to log in again. I just closed the window and everything was fine. In one case, the window kept popping up after I closed it, at which point I quit Thunderbird entirely and restarted the app – and then it was fine. Unbelievable how glitchy this stuff can be.

Unsubscribe from Unneeded Mailboxes

You may already know that you don’t want to bother downloading some emails. Before Thunderbird downloads all these emails, you can right-click on the account at the left side (the top thing, with the email folders under it) and click the “Subscribe…” option. You can uncheck any mailboxes you know you don’t need. But… if you’re trying to have a full archive here, you may just want to leave this alone and get everything.

Now We Wait…

Depending on how many emails you have, this download process can take from hours to DAYS… yes, days. If your computer goes to sleep, it’s possible all of this will stop till it wakes up again.

You might want to keep your computer from sleeping over night. Here are some methods for doing this. If you have a laptop, be sure it’s plugged in when you do this.

Once you have all the email, you’re going to also need to wait for Thunderbird to index all of that email. That may also take quite a while. Use the Tools > Activity Monitor to watch progress.

Scroll to Top