All Microsoft-related mail accounts were shifted to Outlook.com much earlier, as a part of their upgrade process. Users have to reconnect their Outlook desktop email clients to Outlook.com to continue syncing emails.
If you’re having trouble connecting Microsoft Outlook on your Windows PC to Outlook.com, then this post will help you troubleshoot the issue.
Troubleshoot issues with Outlook.com migration
Despite the advantages of the upgrade, a few problems have been reported by users. Let us take a look at them.
Related Article: This setting can’t be applied to any of your accounts
Email account name shows up as outlook_ [long series of characters] @outlook.com
Users who have migrated their email accounts to Outlook.com have reported an issue in which the name of the email account appears as “outlook_[long series of characters]@outlook.com” in the Folder Pane. This causes a problem because recipients see the email as being sent from outlook_[long series of characters]@outlook.com, and if the sender responds to that email address, the message bounces back.
This problem only affects users who are using the Outlook client on Windows. It works fine with Outlook.com.
To fix this, go to account.live.com/names/Manage and set your Outlook.com email ID as your primary alias. Remove any other email IDs.
Company’s name missing in contacts upon syncing to a server
One potential resolution for this issue is to add the details of crucial contacts on Outlook.com itself. Another option would be to try syncing Outlook to the server again to see if that works.
The sender’s email gets added to the ‘To’ field automatically while sending the mail
When adding multiple recipients to an email, the sender’s own email address is added to the “To” field by default. Unfortunately, there is no known solution for this bug yet, but the best workaround, for now, is to delete the extra email address manually.
From field always shows the Outlook.com account’s email ID
If you have multiple accounts associated with your Outlook 2013 or Outlook 2016 for Windows, the from field always defaults to your Outlook.com email ID when you try to send emails from your other accounts.
A couple of workarounds could be tried as a fix for the build issue.
The best way to change your ‘from’ address every time you send an email is to use your personal account rarely.
If you’re looking for a longer-term workaround for this problem, create an empty Outlook Data File and restart Outlook for Windows.
A few things to be noted when migrating to Outlook.com
- Multiple devices: If a user has multiple devices, all devices using Outlook for Windows desktop client would have to be re-connected to Outlook.com.
- Mobile phones: Mobile phones do not use the same client as desktops. Thus they do not need to be re-connected to Outlook.com.
- Mac systems: Mac systems do not use the Outlook for Windows client. Thus they do not need to be re-connected to Outlook.com. This procedure is only for Outlook for Windows desktop clients.
- Data transfer: All data stored on the server would be migrated to Outlook.com. However, drafts and outboxes would probably get deleted since they are stored on the system locally. You could back them up if needed.
- Auto-complete addresses: Anything that happens to these lists would be similar to the action upon re-building a new Outlook profile. In usual cases, Outlook.com would pick up email addresses from the list of ID’s you have mailed to.
No product is perfect, but Microsoft is trying to make this transition as smooth as possible for users.
Hello, My name is Shari & I am a writer for the ‘Outlook AppIns’ blog. I’m a CSIT graduate & I’ve been working in the IT industry for 3 years.