How-To

Outlook.com Tip: Set Your Default Email Account

By Brian Burgess

Updated October 11, 2023

If you have multiple email accounts set up in Outlook.com, it’s easy to set one as the default. This is handy when using one for business, personal, etc.

Outlook.com is an awesome email service from Microsoft. I recently made the switch to Windows 8 on my main computer. And I’m now using it as my primary email client.

When you set up an Outlook.com account, your Microsoft address is the default, but you can change it to something else. This is handy when you have multiple email accounts set up and want to use one account for business, another for personal, one for spam…etc.

Set Default Account in Outlook.com

Log in to your Outlook.com address and click Settings (gear icon). Then select More Mail Settings.

In Outlook.com Options, click Sending / Receiving Email from Other Accounts.

Next, you’ll see a list of all email accounts you have set up in Outlook.com. Under the You Can Send Mail from These Accounts section, click Use as Default next to the account you want to make the default.

If you want to add email accounts from other services, the process is easy. Check out my article on how to add Gmail to Outlook.com. Another good article on using multiple accounts is how to create an alias email address. The alias feature provides increased security and decreases SPAM.