Can you have multiple email addresses on Outlook?

If you're anything like me, then your emails are scattered across several different services. You probably use Gmail as well as a desktop client such as Apple Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird. And maybe you also access your mail using web-based clients such as Yahoo! Mail and AOL's AIM Mail.  It seems that most people these days keep at least one other address book besides their own physical one -- either through an online service or via mobile apps (for example, Google Voice).

For many users, this is fine. But if you need more than just one account with which to check and respond to messages, organizing all those disparate inboxes can get messy fast. Luckily there are ways around this problem by utilizing various tricks and features within Windows Live Hotmail (now known simply as Hotmail), Microsoft Office 2010, and third party programs.

In this article we'll look at how you may be able to set up separate accounts within Microsoft Outlook itself so you can have two independent inboxes running side by side. For the purpose of our discussion, let's assume that you've already created each new account and have verified them both separately from any existing accounts associated with your name. If not, follow my instructions below to create accounts using free trial versions of Hotmail, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote, Skype, and Outlook.

We'll start with how you can make better sense out of having multiple inboxes open simultaneously.

How do I organize multiple email addresses?

The first thing to consider when managing multiple email accounts is what kind of information will be contained within each individual mailbox. It doesn't really matter whether they're related to business or pleasure -- but try to think about what type of content would likely appear within each folder/label combination.

Let's say you have three email accounts: Work1, Personal2, and Inbox3. The "work" account contains important documents pertaining to your job function while the second ("personal") account includes family news, current events, etc. Finally, the last account serves only as a catchall for incoming junk mail.

Now imagine opening up Outlook and viewing the following folders/labels:

Work - Contains your company correspondence

Personal - Contains family photos, vacation updates, birthday wishes, etc.

Spam - Holds spam message attachments

Outlook Junk Folder - Sends unsolicited commercial email directly into this folder

As you can see, even though Outlook appears to show four distinct inboxes, none of them actually correspond to where your actual email resides. Instead, everything shows up under the generic label labeled "Junk." This could lead to confusion because you'd think certain messages were missing, especially since you don't know exactly what sort of contents exist in each respective folder. Therefore, you should avoid creating labels that contain too much detail.

Once you have established general categories for each of your email accounts, create subfolders for each category inside each main location. Then move all relevant items into its appropriate place. So instead of seeing a single "outlook.com" folder, you now have five unique ones: outlook_inbox1, outlook_inbox2, outlook_junk, outlook_inbox3, and outlook_spam. Now you won't lose track of specific messages anymore.

Also, take note of the fact that every time you delete a message from, say, outlook_junk, it gets moved back to its original location -- namely, junk. Thus, whenever you want to remove something from your primary inbox, it has to go back to the same spot it originally came from (i.e., Outlook Junk Folder) before being deleted entirely. Otherwise, once a message moves away from this central location, it becomes untraceable. To prevent this from happening, copy the file(s) you wish to permanently delete to another location outside of Outlook.

Next, take a closer look at how you can combine Outlook tasks with email accounts.

Is it good to have multiple email accounts?

When you have multiple email accounts, you must decide whether to use a unified interface or maintain separate interfaces. Personally, unless you're receiving confidential corporate data over unsecured networks, I recommend keeping things separated. That way, although it takes longer to perform common functions, you can still easily switch between email accounts without losing track of important files.

To accomplish this, you need to enable IMAP support for your mailboxes. Under Tools & Options, click the Accounts tab and select Configure Email Program Settings. In here, scroll down until you come across the POP / SMTP Server entry box. Click Advanced settings.... On the next window, change the Delivery Method dropdown menu to IMAP. Once done, hit OK. Your changes will apply immediately.

Another option is to download the latest version of Mailsmith Lite [Broken URL Removed], a popular third-party tool used to send bulk mails, import contacts and calendars, schedule automatic replies, and connect to your hotmail account. With Mailsmith Lite, you can choose which mailbox to receive mail from, and which to forward to. For instance, you can specify that all outgoing mail goes to your primary mailbox while incoming mail will always go to a secondary mailbox.  Then configure forwarding rules as needed.

Mailsmith Lite allows you to add additional mailboxes for your domain names, and supports Exchange 2003, 2007, 2010 servers. Download links for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Snow Leopard, and Lion can be found here. There's also a portable version available.

One caveat however, is that you cannot currently create a rule to automatically archive messages based on sender. However, if you find yourself needing this feature, you can manually create a filter for each group of messages containing similar subjects. For example, messages sent to @hotmail.com will be archived regardless of who sent it.

Can Outlook handle multiple email accounts?

Yes, it certainly can. Just remember that whatever action you choose, it needs to occur after the initial setup process described above. Also, you may need to re-configure your filters accordingly.

Here's an outline of the steps involved:

Open Outlook Express and load your desired profiles.

Go to File & Account Setup and enter the login credentials for each profile. When prompted, accept the default answer if no other choice presents itself.

Afterward, go to Tools & Security Center and select Change Password. Enter your password twice and confirm your answers.

Click Next when asked if you'd like to synchronize your calendar.

Choose Sync Calendars and pick the correct profiles again. Hit Finish when finished.

On the final page of Account setup, click Manage Profiles. From here, click New Profile.... Name the profile according to your preferences and fill in all required fields except User Information. Leave the latter blank.

Under Active Directory Connections, click Add... and navigate to the server holding your user directory. Select Internet Explorer 5.0 and click Continue. Follow the prompts to complete the wizard.

Finally, repeat step 4 for each additional profile you added during Account setup.

How do I view multiple inboxes in Outlook?

This part isn't difficult. Simply right-click anywhere in your Outlook toolbar and select Create Multiple Inboxes... From here, you can assign different colors to each of your inboxes and customize their icons. Each section will display its own icon, allowing you to quickly identify which one you want to interact with. By doing this, you can effectively treat each account as its own mini app.

But wait, didn't I mention earlier that you couldn't create separate inboxes using Outlook alone? Well, I lied. Here's why:

First off, if you had opened up Outlook prior to adding your extra mail accounts, you wouldn't be able to utilize the multiple inbox feature because your Outlook installation was limited to accessing only one particular mailbox. Secondly, if you created a new profile after setting up your extra accounts, you'd end up getting duplicate entries for each account in your main inbox area. Lastly, if you tried to create multiple inboxes at the same time, you might encounter errors due to conflicting dependencies.

So what happens when you accidentally forget about an old mail account? Don't worry, there's a solution for that.

Last, but definitely not least, we'll examine how you can integrate your favorite social network feeds with Outlook. Since Twitter is now integrated with Bing News, it makes perfect sense to tie together Facebook and LinkedIn as well. After all, you can't very well share interesting articles from CNN Breaking News if all you see in your feed is stuff from your friend list!

Head over to the official Facebook application portal, sign in with your usual credentials, and authorize it to access your Facebook status stream.

Once completed, head over to the LinkedIn website and grant the application permission to post statuses on your behalf.

From here on out, whenever you visit http://facebook.live.com/, you'll be redirected to the aforementioned page. Likewise, visiting https://www.linkedin.com/feed will direct you straightaway to your personalized LinkedIn homepage. All major social networking sites provide this functionality natively, so there's no reason to ever miss out on another update.

Have you ever managed more than one email address in Outlook before? What worked best for you? Share your thoughts and feedback with us below.

When you're managing more than one email address at a time, it can be helpful to see them all together—especially if they use different providers like Gmail or Office 365. Here are several ways that you can get your emails into Outlook without missing an important message from any account.

If you've got two Exchange accounts set up in Outlook, we'll show you how to add them both so that you always stay connected. If you want to access other services' email (like Gmail) with Outlook instead, this is also possible. And finally, if you just need to sort through a bunch of messages quickly but don't actually want to read them, there's even a quick way to do that too! Let's dive right in.

How do I view all email accounts in Outlook?

You probably won't need to go looking for this feature very often, but when you do come across it, it makes life much easier. In Outlook 2010+, click File " Account Settings, then select Manage Accounts under Other Email Options. From here, you can simply check off each account you'd like to disable. That will prevent those particular accounts from showing up as choices when adding new ones later. This only works with POP3 accounts though. The same menu lets you enable Quick Access, which displays these disabled accounts first when opening Outlook. It doesn't offer anything else in terms of customization options, unfortunately.

Note that disabling IMAP accounts via the above method will leave you unable to send out email using those accounts until after you re-enable them manually. To avoid this, you may prefer to use another tool to temporarily hide specific accounts while keeping your existing mailbox intact. We recommend K-9 Mail.

How do I manage multiple Exchange mailboxes in Outlook?

The easiest way to deal with multiple Exchange mailboxes is by creating separate folders within your default Outlook folder. For example, let's say you wanted to create a subfolder called Work inside your C:\Users\[Your User Name]\Documents\Outlook Files\Inbox\Mail Folder. Then open up the Mail Folders pane on the left side of Outlook and drag over all the boxes next to [Account 1], [Account 2], etc., onto the desktop itself to make shortcuts. Now whenever you click Browse Mail & Address Books in the navigation bar, you should see all your mailboxes listed underneath.

This isn't necessarily perfect because it means every single email will end up in the main box where it was received unless you move it somewhere else yourself. However, since you already know exactly what you want to keep track of, this approach is ideal for someone who wants to take care of their own organization. Just remember not to delete individual items once they arrive in their destination mailbox. Otherwise, you could find yourself wondering why certain mails aren't appearing anymore.

Another option would be to put everything into its own dedicated PST file. Right-click anywhere blank in Outlook and choose New | Personal Storage File (.pst). Once again, head down to Mail Folders and copy over all the mailboxes associated with your various Exchange accounts. Then rename each mailbox individually so they appear properly in Explorer. When you click any mailbox name from the dropdown menu, you should now see it listed alongside the others—even if it's still sitting in the same general location.

Lastly, you can try setting up multiple profiles in Outlook. Head back to Account Settings and scroll alllll the waaaayyyy past the bottom of the page to Profiles. Click Create Profile and give it whatever unique title you'd like. Select whether you want this profile to automatically launch when you log on to Windows. Next, switch to whichever account(s) you want to use for that session, and hit Edit. Under General tab, add a description, and change the Launch Application field to Outlook 2007+. Hit OK. Your chosen profile should now show up in the list of available choices when launching Outlook.

Once you've done this, don't forget about changing settings such as synchronization times between your devices, local security policies, and so forth. They'll affect things like whether your email gets backed up to OneDrive and whether signatures display correctly when replying to messages.

Can you have multiple inboxes in Outlook?

Yes, absolutely. Open up Mail Viewer (the ribbon icon in the lower right corner of Outlook), and select All Messages. On the resulting screen, look along the top edge. There should be a small arrowhead pointing towards the far right. Drag that arrowhead to wherever you want your new inbox to appear. You can drag in either direction—just make sure it points toward the rightmost column. Do this for each additional inbox you'd like to add. Repeat the process for the extra columns on the left side as well.

Here's something interesting to note about having multiple inboxes in Outlook: you can navigate between them pretty easily, no matter what size they happen to become. Simply type Ctrl + Left Arrow / Ctrl + Right Arrow to jump forward or backwards. If you ever decide to collapse one or more of your inboxes, you can do so by selecting Multiple Inboxes at the top of the Mail Navigation Pane and choosing Collapse Current Inbox.

To expand them, however, you'll need to perform some advanced editing. First, download and install MultiExpandIt, a free utility extension designed specifically to handle this situation. After installing, restart Outlook. Then, right-click on any empty space in a collapsed inbox and choose Insert Group.... Enter a descriptive label in the Label box and enter Excel Spreadsheet (.xls) as the group format. Finally, highlight the entire contents of your expanded inbox and press Save As… Choose HTML Format. Give it a filename and save it to your computer. Double-clicking on this.HTML document will cause the inbox to reopen in Outlook.

Now that you've created your multi-inbox setup, the rest is easy: just repeat steps 3 and 4 for each subsequent inbox you wish to open. Of course, you can customize the layout further by tweaking the sizes of groups, labels, and more.

How do I view different inboxes in Outlook?

Just as mentioned earlier, navigating to Mail Viewer/All Messages reveals all your messages for easy viewing. Want to view your inbox from a specific provider instead? Start typing its name into the search box located along the upper portion of the window. For instance, searching for Google brings up the Search Bar, whereas Yahoo shows up under Web Results. You can also filter messages based on sender or subject heading. Just start typing in keywords related to your interests. Alternatively, you can browse your inboxes directly from the tabs along the top. Each section contains a preview of recent activity. Hover over the item to reveal more details, including attachments.

These methods are great for people with lots of unread messages in one service but not another. Or maybe you have a ton of messages waiting to be sent, but none ready yet. In that case, sorting them according to date range can help you better prioritize. Type Date Received into the search bar and pick your desired timeframe (e.g. Last Week, Month, Year, etc.). You can also sort by Subject line. Both sorts allow you to apply filters. So you could narrow down your results by channel, priority level, or status.

Finally, if you simply want to clean up your inbox, you can do that too. Go ahead and mark messages as Read, Unread, Important, or Trivial. Use the search function to locate messages marked as Important or Trivial. Highlight them and press Delete key. You can also remove individual items by clicking the trashcan symbol in the upper right corner. This last tip applies to non-email sources as well. Just hover over a link in Chrome or Firefox and click X to close it. You can also clear cookies or cache files to speed up browsing. Plus, there are plenty of extensions out there that can help you declutter your inbox. Check out our favorites below.

Do you have a favorite trick or workaround for accessing multiple email accounts in Outlook? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Microsoft Office 365 subscribers can get five additional Gmail accounts added to their subscription plan at no extra cost. If you're not a subscriber, or don't want to spend money on more than one account, there are other options available that'll help you set up your own virtual inboxes with ease.

We've compiled some of our favorite ways to merge two or more email accounts into one in order to keep everything under control -- whether it's using an add-in like Mail Merge Master or setting up separate mailboxes within the same user profile (Outlook).

How do I Unmerge email accounts in Outlook?

If you ever decide to split up your email address(es) again, you need only follow these steps:

Open Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019: Go to File " Info " Account Settings " Accounts. You will see each individual account listed here. Select the account which you wish to delete by clicking its name. Then click Delete this account " Yes. This removes all data associated with the selected account from the system. The account itself won't be deleted. To prevent any incoming messages from being sent to the old account, make sure Notify me when new items arrive has been unchecked. Finally, hit OK.

For Outlook 2003: Open Control Panel " Administrative Tools " Folder Options. In the General tab, scroll down and select Edit folders. From the list of columns, remove Email Program Name, Protocol, SMTP Server, Port Number, and SSL Support. Now go back to Accounts and repeat the process above with another account. Repeat this for as many accounts as required. When done, open Outlook Setup " New Profile " Finish setup. Your profiles should now appear in the main window. Click Start Profiles. These settings apply forever unless changed manually.

To change the existing settings for a particular account, right-click on the relevant mailbox entry in Accounts and choose Properties. On the E-mail tab, uncheck Send junk e-mails if necessary, then check Sync email across devices. Hit Save changes.

Can we configure 2 accounts in Outlook?

Yes! It depends what type of configuration you would like to use. There are actually three different methods to achieve almost identical results.

The first method involves adding multiple Exchange accounts via Group Policy Editor. Once installed, launch GPO Management Console, search for Administrative Templates\System\Email System Client Access Policies\Accounts, double-clicking Enable Multiple Domain User Accounts. Double-click the Enabled box and input yes for both boxes next to Allow read access to primary domain servers and Allow write access to secondary domain servers.

This allows users to create additional mailboxes in Outlook, where they can send and receive email. However, since Exchange doesn't support IMAP, those emails aren't accessible through mobile apps such as Outlook Mobile. They also cannot autoarchive them to OneDrive.

Method Two uses POP3 instead of IMAP. Add the second Exchange server information below the first one. Under Local users must authenticate using secure password, input correct credentials. Ensure that Authenticated Users has Read rights to the folder specified. Also ensure that Junk filter policy is enabled.

Finally, enable the Show message headers option under Advanced Features. With this combination, you can use Outlook as a central location for managing multiple IMAP accounts. Just remember to disable AutoArchive so you can still view archived emails offline.

Lastly, consider creating a third Exchange account and copying over your most important data. Use that account for sending out newsletters, while the others hold less critical communications.

Note: All of the above works fine with Hotmail too.

How do I manage all my emails in one place?

A great way to consolidate your various email accounts is to install an application specifically designed to handle multiple inboxes. For example, Mail Merge Master automatically merges contacts and sends bulk email, making it perfect for anyone who wants to maintain several email aliases but needs a single inbox to monitor all their correspondence in one place.

Mail Merge Master lets you import contact info, including company names, phone numbers, mailing addresses, etc., as well as text fields. Using a simple wizard interface, you can quickly build personalized letters, postcards, flyers, invitations, thank-you notes and even greeting cards without having to switch between windows.

Once built, Mail Merge Master creates custom links for recipients based on the parameters defined in the letter template. What makes this program unique is how easy it is to customize. Rather than just changing colors, fonts or sizes, you can alter entire blocks of written content. And because it integrates seamlessly into Windows 7/8/10 environments, switching between applications becomes seamless.

Another tool worth considering is Airmail. Its clean design and intuitive navigation allow you to easily navigate between tabs containing every piece of received email, regardless of sender.

In addition to letting you manage multiple email clients simultaneously, Airmail offers features that improve productivity. Customize filters for certain types of messages, such as social media updates, newsletters and promotional emails. Set reminders and snooze times, and mark specific threads as favorites. Create templates for repetitive tasks, and let Airmail take care of the rest.

Download: Mail Merge Master ($39.99) | Airmail 3 Free [No Longer Available]

Which app is best for multiple email accounts?

While none of the solutions mentioned above offer a true unified inbox experience, they can certainly come close. So long as you know exactly which feature you require before diving in, you shouldn't encounter any problems.

But if you absolutely need a solution that combines multiple email services together, try something like GSuite Pro. This enterprise software package includes Google Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides, plus 50GB of cloud storage space. By connecting your business email systems to this service, you gain access to documents saved directly onto the platform, allowing you to share files securely with colleagues.

It also supports integration with numerous popular CRM platforms, meaning you can stay connected to customers wherever possible. Plus, thanks to collaboration tools, everyone involved in project management receives realtime notifications whenever someone shares a document.

G Suite Pro costs $5 per month per person after a 30-day free trial period.

Have you tried merging more than one email address into Outlook? Tell us about your experiences in the comments section below.