How to Create a Outlook.com Account

Creating an Outlook.com address takes a few minutes, and the account it creates is a Microsoft account — the same one used for Windows, Xbox, OneDrive and Office. Worth knowing before you start, because whatever you name it will follow you across all of them.

The part most guides skip is the genuinely useful bit: one Outlook account can hold several email addresses. That is covered below, along with a deletion trap worth understanding before you go anywhere near it.

Creating the account

1. Go to outlook.com and choose to create a free account.

2. Enter the address you want, and pick a domain from the dropdown.

3. Choose a password.

4. Enter your first and last name.

5. Enter your country or region and date of birth.

6. Complete the puzzle or verification Microsoft presents.

The verification step is usually a picture puzzle rather than a phone number, which is a meaningful difference from signing up for Gmail — Microsoft leans on the puzzle where Google leans on SMS.

Choosing your address

Take a moment over this. Your primary address is what appears on Microsoft devices and on everything you send, and while it can be changed later using aliases, the original address stays attached to the account permanently.

• Letters, numbers, dots, underscores and hyphens only. Spaces and other characters are rejected.

• Unlike Gmail, dots matter. Gmail treats john.smith and johnsmith as one address. Outlook does not — they are different addresses, and both can exist separately.

• Avoid birth years. They date the address and reveal your age to everyone you write to.

• Think about the other services. This name will show up on your Xbox profile and in shared Office documents.

Aliases: several addresses, one inbox

This is Outlook's best feature and the one almost nobody mentions. An alias is an additional email address on the same account. It shares the same inbox, contacts, settings and password, and you can sign in with any alias on the account. You choose which address each message is sent from.

That makes some genuinely useful arrangements possible:

• A private address for people, and a separate one for shops and newsletters — both landing in one inbox.

• A neutral address for job applications alongside a personal one.

• A dedicated address for a side project, without a second account to sign in and out of.

Gmail has nothing equivalent. Its plus-addressing trick — you+shop@gmail.com — is visibly derived from your real address, so it neither hides it nor lets you sign in with it.

Adding an alias

1. Sign in and open your Microsoft account settings.

2. Find Your info, then the section for managing how you sign in.

3. Choose Add email, then Create a new email address and add it as an alias.

4. Pick the new address and confirm.

You can also add an address you already own elsewhere — a Gmail address, or one on your own domain — as an alias for signing in. What you cannot add is an existing Hotmail, Live, Outlook.com or MSN address, or a work or school address. Those belong to their own accounts and cannot be moved.

Changing your main address

If you want a different primary address, create the new one as an alias and then make it primary. Your old address keeps working and keeps delivering to the same inbox — so nothing sent to it is lost while you tell people about the change.

The trap: deleting an alias is permanent

This is the part worth reading twice. If you remove an alias on a Microsoft domain — @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com or @msn.com — Microsoft's own documentation states that the address is permanently deleted and can never be associated with any Microsoft account again. Not by you, not by anyone, not ever.

Microsoft does not recycle its own addresses, reportedly so that nobody inherits mail meant for a previous owner. Sensible policy, but it means a tidy-up you regret cannot be undone.

So: if you no longer want an address, consider simply leaving it attached and unused rather than removing it. Aliases cost nothing to keep.

Addresses from other domains behave differently — remove a @gmail.com alias and it usually becomes available again straight away.

Hotmail addresses

Two things people ask constantly, both worth being clear about.

You cannot create a new @hotmail.com, @live.com or @msn.com alias. Microsoft's documentation is explicit. Those domains are closed to new aliases; @outlook.com is what you get.

Having @hotmail.com does not give you the matching @outlook.com. They are separate addresses. Mail sent to the @outlook.com version will simply bounce unless someone has created it. If you want both, add the second as an alias — assuming nobody else took it.

Set up recovery before you need it

Do this immediately, not after something goes wrong:

• Add a second way to prove who you are — a phone number and a backup email, ideally both.

• Generate a recovery code from your account security settings and store it away from your phone. It gets you in when everything else fails.

• Consider a passkey. Microsoft is steering everyone toward them, and a passkey cannot be phished. If you keep declining the prompt, you will keep being asked.

Recovery is decided by what you set up in advance. Five minutes now saves a great deal later.

Free account or Microsoft 365?

The free account gives you the mailbox, OneDrive storage, and the web versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. That is enough for most people.

A Microsoft 365 subscription adds the desktop apps, considerably more storage, and removes the ads from the Outlook.com web interface. Worth it if you use Office seriously; unnecessary if you just want email.

After the account exists

• Send yourself a test message and confirm it arrives.

• Add the account to your phone using the Outlook app, which handles multiple mailboxes well.

• Set up a mail client if you use one — note that Microsoft has been retiring older authentication methods, so a client that cannot sign in through Microsoft may be refused.

• Consider your aliases now, while the account is new. It is much easier to keep shopping mail separate from day one than to untangle it later.