Microsoft enables Yahoo Mail and IMAP import on Outlook.com

If you are using an online web mail service, it is often rather difficult to switch to another one. Say, you are using Gmail or Yahoo Mail primarily and want to switch to Microsoft's Outlook email service instead.
If you are using a desktop email client, that's not a problem at all. Just add Outlook.com as another account and you are done. All the emails that you have received and sent using the other email services are still there and nothing is lost as a consequence.
But if you the online service on Outlook.com, you were out of luck until recently. While Outlook supported imports from Google's Gmail service for some time, it did not support users who wanted to migrate from other services.
Not any longer. Microsoft has enabled the import of emails from Yahoo Mail and IMAP-supporting providers on Outlook.com.
What this means is that you can import mails from any provider supporting IMAP.
Here is how this is done
The steps that you have to undertake are the following:
- Visit the outlook.com website and sign in to your account if you are not logged in already.
- Click on the settings icon at the top right of the screen next to your name and select options from the context menu that opens up.
- Locate the "import email accounts" link here under managing your account and click on it.
- If you want to import emails from Google or Yahoo, select the option. Otherwise, select other email provider.
- Note that you can only import emails from Yahoo and other providers. Only Gmail supports email and contacts.
To import emails from Yahoo, simply enter your Yahoo Mail email address and password into the form that opens up.

A click on options displays to import options.
- Import email into existing folders such as Inbox, Sent and Draft. Create new folders for custom folders.
- Import email into new set of folders or subfolders, including new folders for custom labels.
The first option is selected by default. If you do not want emails mixed together, switch it to the second option instead.
Microsoft will check the values that you have entered once you click on the import button. If everything is alright, you are taken back to the outlook.com homepage.
Here you get a prompt that informs you how to set up forwarding on Yahoo Mail so that all future messages are automatically forwarded to your Microsoft account.
The status of the import is displayed at the top of the outlook page. Note that it may take a while before everything is imported. This depends largely on the number of mails that you have in that account.
Once you have set up the forwarding, you will have access to all existing and future email messages sent to your Yahoo Mail or third-party email account.
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You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!