Microsoft Online Services Team Blog : Technical Help

Send and Receive POP E-Mail with Exchange Online

JimGlynn — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:41:00 GMT

Exchange Online now supports POP e-mail, so you can send and receive Exchange Online e-mail using any POP e-mail client. For information about other recently announced features, see Service Update: October 2009 Release Availability, Features Announced.

NOTE: POP e-mail does not provide Free/Busy, presence, calendar, tasks, and other rich features normally associated with Exchange Online e-mail. Additionally, POP e-mail access cannot be enabled for Deskless Worker accounts.

Prerequisites

· If you are a Microsoft Online Services administrator, you can contact Microsoft Online Services Technical Support to request POP service, and provide them with the list of e-mail addresses to POP enable. You can specify a list of individual mailboxes or every mailbox in your organization. You can track the status of your service request on the Support tab of the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center.

· Any POP e-mail client.

· Microsoft Online Services user account with a Standard (not Deskless) Exchange Online license.

· Port 995 in through your company’s firewall.

Configuration

When Support notifies you that POP e-mail has been enabled, follow your POP e-mail client instructions to configure your e-mail client. You’ll need to provide the following information:

· Port number: 995

· Security protocol: SSL

· User account: For example, jim@example.com

· User account password

· POP Server: select from POP Servers by Location table below.

NOTE: If you want Exchange Online to keep a backup of your e-mail, select the configuration option that allows you to keep your e-mail messages on the server.

POP Servers by Location

Asia Pacific (APAC)

pop.mail.apac.microsoftonline.com

Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)

pop.mail.emea.microsoftonline.com

North America

pop.mail.microsoftonline.com

What State Are Your User Accounts In?

JimGlynn — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:25:00 GMT

The most common user account states are enabled and disabled, which are pretty straight forward. However, if your company is using the Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization tool, your user accounts can also be activated and deactivated. The combination of all of these states can be confusing, so let's look at what each state means.

The four states are:

· Enabled

· Disabled

· Deactivated

· Activated

Enabled and Disabled

If your company is using Active Directory, you'll be happy to know that enabled and disabled accounts work just like they do in Active Directory. You have the option to enable a user account when you create it. Users can log on with an enabled account and they are prevented from logging on if their account is disabled.

You may want to disable an account when someone goes on vacation, or if you want to temporarily lock an account for any reason. Disabled accounts continue to exist and use one or more licenses; they're just locked. Enabling the account unlocks it and returns it to service.

Deactivated

If you're not using the Directory Synchronization tool, you won't have deactivated user accounts. Deactivated accounts are visible in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center. The good news is that they don't use any licenses, so they're free. Think of them as shadow accounts waiting for you to assign services to them.

Deactivated user accounts are created by the Directory Synchronization tool when it synchronizes all user accounts, contacts, and mail-enabled groups from your company's on-premises Active Directory directory service to Microsoft Online Services. Synchronizing accounts to Microsoft Online Services is a fast, easy way to create user accounts. However, if you have a large company, you may not want to assign services to all of your users at the same time, so synchronized accounts are in a deactivated state until you activate them by assigning services to them.

Activated

Activated user accounts are accounts that have been assigned one or more services. Each activated account uses one or more licenses. If you create a user account in the Administration Center, the account is automatically activated when you create it and assign a service to it.

You can activate deactivated user accounts by selecting one or more accounts in the Administration Center and clicking Activate User Accounts. This lets the service know that this is now a "real" user account that will start using licenses. The rest of the activation process works just like creating a new user account.

Enabling Incoming Mail for Specific Domain Registrars

Stephanie Shenk — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:35:00 GMT

With Exchange Online, in order to allow your domain to receive e-mail, you need to modify the Mail Exchange (MX) record of your domain. This needs to be done at your domain registrar’s Web site, but navigating the various registrar Web sites can be confusing. Therefore, we've tracked down instructions specific to some of the more popular domain registrars.

The general process for enabling incoming mail for your domain is as follows. For a detailed procedure, see Enable Incoming E-Mail for a Domain.

1. In the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center, find your domain.

2. Click your domain to open the Domain Properties dialog box. On the Inbound Messaging tab, click Enable.

3. In the Enable Inbound Messaging Wizard, click Enable again.

4. At this point, the new MX record will be shown by the wizard. Using it, you need to change your MX record at your domain registrar. Specific instructions for several registrars can be found here:

· DomainDiscount24.com

· DomainDiscover.com

· dotster.com

· DynDNS.com

· gandi.net

· GoDaddy.com

· hover.com

· moniker.com

· mydomain.com

· no-ip.com

· yahoo.com

5. Return to the wizard and click Finish.

There are several details and considerations when enabling incoming mail for your domain. See Enable Incoming E-Mail for a Domain for these details.

Verifying Domains for Use in Microsoft Online Services

paulenglis — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:28:00 GMT

To use a custom domain in Microsoft Online Services, you need to verify your domain in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center. The process for domain verification includes adding a CNAME record to your domain's DNS record. But navigating domain registrar Web sites can be confusing. To make verifying your domain easier, we've tracked down instructions specific to some of the more popular domain registrars.

The general process for domain verification is:

Gather information about your domain
Create an alias, or CNAME record, at your domain registrar
Confirm the verification

Steps 1 and 3 are performed within the Administration Center; instructions for these steps can be found in the Verify a Domain from Any Registrar Help article.

Step 2 varies for each registrar. Following are pages with instructions for some domain registrars:

· DomainDiscount24.com

· DomainDiscover.com

· dotster.com

· DynDNS.com

· gandi.net

· hover.com

· moniker.com

· mydomain.com

· no-ip.com

Don't see your registrar in this list? See Verify a Domain from Any Registrar for instructions for more domain registrars.

Customize your Microsoft SharePoint Online experience. Read the new Developer’s Guide

Lori - Microsoft — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:13:00 GMT

In the new Microsoft SharePoint Online Developer’s Guide find out how you can customize your company’s SharePoint experience so that it answers your specific business needs. Learn the key steps to installing and customizing SharePoint Online applications, ways to integrate live data; provide your team with custom no-code workflows, and learn how to extend SharePoint online with Microsoft Silverlight.

Technical Overview of the Business Productivity Online Suite

Lori - Microsoft — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:12:00 GMT

View the Webcast: Technical Overview of the Business Productivity Online Suite from Microsoft Online Services (Level 200)

The Business Productivity Online (BPO) Suite from Microsoft Online Services includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Exchange Hosted Filtering, enterprise-class software delivered as a subscription service, hosted by Microsoft, and sold with partners. In this webcast, we introduce you to the BPO Suite and its components, and we demonstrate the ease with which IT professionals can set up the service for their organizations and users.

Presenter: John Betz, Director, Microsoft Corporation

Asia Pacific (APAC)	pop.mail.apac.microsoftonline.com
Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)	pop.mail.emea.microsoftonline.com
North America	pop.mail.microsoftonline.com