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Unable to add imap accounts to Outlook (Android 16)

Phil Banks 0 Reputation points
2025-12-07T23:32:23.4666667+00:00

It appears I'm unable to add imap accounts to Outlook on Android at present. I've done it many, many times before (currently personally have 13 different imap accounts on my phone) - however I can't add any new ones; it always results in an error.

I've been very careful in checking the data/advanced data (and asked another person to check) yet every time, it just returns an error. I've even deleted some accounts on the computer and re-added them to make sure; and it's working fine on Outlook for Mac without issue.

Is there a bug in the current outlook release for Android 16 which is stopping the addition of imap accounts (provider is ionos)?

Outlook | Outlook for mobile | Outlook for Android | For home
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  1. Chloe-V 2,945 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2025-12-08T13:39:34.0966667+00:00

    Hi Phil Banks,

    Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A forum.

    I understand that the known issue affects manual IMAP setup on some Android devices. In certain cases, the automatic account detection feature may interfere with manual configuration and lead to incidents when adding new accounts.

    To work around this, please try the steps below:

    1. Add the account using manual setup (IMAP)

    • When entering your email address, ignore automatic suggestions and select:
    • Set up account manually > IMAP
    • Then enter the IMAP/SMTP details provided by IONOS.

    2. Clear Outlook cache or reinstall the app

    • Go to Settings > Apps > Outlook > Storage > Clear cache
    • If the incident persists, uninstall and reinstall the app.

    3. Verify your IONOS IMAP/SMTP settings

    • Ensure secure connection (SSL/TLS) is enabled:
    • IMAP: imap.ionos.com — SSL — Port 993
    • SMTP: smtp.ionos.com — SSL Port 465 or TLS Port 587

    4. Test the account in another email app

    • Try adding the same IMAP account to another app (Gmail, BlueMail, etc.).
    • If it works there, the incident is limited to the original app environment.

    5. Report the incident through Outlook

    • You can report it directly from the app: Outlook > Settings > Help & Feedback

    If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".  

    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread. 

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