Outlook Series Tips and Tricks, post #3 – How to Set Up Outlook with Office 365 on Surface

This walk-thru works on all versions of MS Surfaces. You obviously have to have Outlook installed. If you own a Surface RT/2, then Outlook RT came installed with the Win 8.1 update. If you have a Surface Pro/2, you will have to purchase and install Office 2013 with Outlook.

The steps are really quite simple. The main thing you have to remember is that you may need to start with a fresh Outlook profile*. This means that if you’ve already set up other email accounts in Outlook, you will likely need to create a new profile (you don’t have to re-install everything but you will need to create a new profile for Outlook 365 and switch between them). The good news is that you don’t necessarily need to wipe your old profile, if you don’t want to. You could simply switch back and forth.

• Section I has instructions on how to set up Outlook with Office 365 from a fresh Outlook install.
• Section II takes you through the steps of setting up a new Outlook profile (if you already have one). It will require you to “switch” between your current mail profile and Office 365 profile.

* Trust me, this is very important. I wasted nearly 3 hours trying to figure out how to install it, only to have it crash on me over and over again. Then finally, I set up a new profile and Voilà! It worked!

Section I – Setup Office 365 on Surface (Fresh Outlook Install):

This section is for you if you haven’t yet used Outlook or set up an Outlook mail profile on your Surface with other email accounts.

• Log in to your Surface with admin rights.
• Make sure you are in Desktop Mode with Outlook closed.
• Swipe in from the left to bring up the Charms bar.
• Select the Search charm and search for and open “Control Panel”.
• From the Control Panel, double-click the Mail icon.
• In the Mail Setup – Outlook window, tap the Email Accounts… button.

• In the Account Settings window, click the New… button.

• In the Add Account window, fill in the required information and click the Next button.

• Outlook will verify your account information. Click Finish.

• You can now Open Outlook. It will ask you to input your user name and password again, be sure to check the remember password box. And you’re done!

Section II – Setup Office 365 on Surface (Additional Profile):

This section is for you, if you have an existing mail profile setup on Outlook with other email accounts. You’ll be adding a second profile (and will have to choose one when you start Outlook) for Office 365.

• In the Control Panel window, double-click the Mail icon.
• In the Mail Setup – Outlook window, click the Show Profiles… button.

• Tap the Add… button.

• Name your new profile and then click OK button.

• Select Prompt for a profile to used… (don’t worry, you can change that later but for now you want to make sure everything works) and OK button.

• Outlook will now kick off the profile setup. As in the steps in Section I, in the Add Account window, fill in the required information and click the Next button.

• Outlook will verify your account information. Click Finish.

• You can now Open Outlook. It will ask you to input your user name and password again, be sure to check the remember password box. And you’re done!

That is how you set up Outlook with Office 365 on your Microsoft Surface tablet. Hopefully, you found this helpful and not too tedious. If you have any questions, please let me know.

You may also like our posts on Surface Accessories and Set up of iTunes on Surface.

Joanna-