A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating a New Outlook.com Email Account 2018

Anyone who has used a Microsoft account in the past can use those credentials for an email account with Outlook.com. If you don't have a Microsoft account, it takes just minutes to open a new Outlook.com account. With a free Outlook.com account, you can access your email, calendar, tasks, and contacts from anywhere you have an internet connection.

How to Create a New Outlook.com Email Account

When you are ready to open a new free email account at Outlook.com:

1. Go to the Outlook.com sign-up screen in your computer browser and clickCreate Account at the top of the screen.
2. Enter your first and last names in the fields provided.
3. Enter your preferred username—the part of the email address that comes before @outlook.com.
4. Click the arrow at the far right of the username field to change the domainfrom the default outlook.com to hotmail.com if you prefer a hotmail address.
5. Enter and re-enter your preferred password. Choose a password that is easy for you to recall and difficult for anyone else to guess.
6. Enter your birthday in the field provided and make an optional gender selection if you want to include this information.
7. Enter your phone number and an alternate email address, which Microsoft uses to keep your account secure. 
8. Enter the characters from the CAPTCHA image.
9. Click Create Account.

You can now open your new Outlook.com account on the web or set it up for access in email programs on computers and mobile devices.

In most cases, you only need to enter the Outlook.com email address and your password to set up access to your messages in an email program or mobile device app.

Outlook.Com Features

An Outlook.com email account offers all the features you expect from an email client in addition to:

• A focused inbox for your most important emails
• Swipe gestures to archive and delete messages
• The ability to schedule messages to return to your inbox at a specified time
• An option to pin important messages to the top of your inbox
• Text-formatting features to personalize your outgoing emails
• Outlook adds travel itineraries and flight plans from email to your calendar.
• Attaches files from Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Box
• Edit Office files right in your inbox

Outlook Mobile Apps

You can use your new Outlook.com account on your mobile devices by downloading the free Microsoft Outlook apps for Android and iOS mobile devices. Outlook.com is built in on any Windows 10 phone. The mobile apps include most of the features available with the free online Outlook.com account including a focused inbox, sharing capability, swipe to delete and archive messages, and powerful search. 

You can view and attach files from OneDrive, Dropbox and other services without having to download them to your phone. 

Outlook.com vs. Hotmail.com

Microsoft bought Hotmail in 1996. The email service went through several name changes including MSN Hotmail and Windows Live Hotmail. The last version of Hotmail was released in 2011. Outlook.com replaced Hotmail in 2013. At that time, Hotmail users were given the opportunity to keep their Hotmail email addresses and to use them with Outlook.com.

It is still possible to get a new Hotmail.com email address when you go through theOutlook.com sign-up process.

What Is Premium Outlook?

Premium Outlook was a stand-alone premium pay version of Outlook. Microsoft discontinued Premium Outlook in late 2017, but it added premium features to the Outlook that is included in Office 365.

Anyone who subscribes to Microsoft's Office 365 Home or Office 365 Personal software packages receives Outlook with premium features as part of the application package. Benefits that are superior to those of a free Outlook.com email address include:

• 50GB mailbox per user

• Improve malware scanning
• An ad-free inbox
• Offline email composition and automatic syncing capabilities
• Custom domains available

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