Setting up an Apple iPhone with Microsoft Office 365

To setup your iPhone with your existing Office 365 email account using Exchange ActiveSync, follow these steps:

1. If this is the first e-mail account on this iPhone, iPad, or iTouch, tap Mail. Otherwise, tap Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account. 
2. Tap Microsoft Exchange. 
3. Tap in the E-mail box and enter your full e-mail address (for example, tony@contoso.com). 
4. Tap in the Username box and enter your full e-mail address again. 
5. Tap in the Password box and enter your password. 
6. Optionally, tap in the Description box and enter a short description for the account. 
7. Tap Next on the upper right corner of the screen.
8. Tap in the Server box and enter your Exchange ActiveSync server name and then tap Next. For instructions for how to determine your Exchange ActiveSync server name, see the Finding My Server Name section below. 
9. Tap Next. 
10. Choose the type of information you want to synchronize. By default, Mail, Calendar, and Contacts are all turned on. To turn off synchronization for a type of information, tap and slide the switch to OFF. 
11. Tap Save. 
12. If you’re prompted to create a new passcode, tap Continue and enter a numeric passcode. You’ll need to enter the passcode twice.

Finding My Server Name

To determine your Exchange ActiveSync server name on Apple devices running iOS 4.x or 5.x (for example, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, GSM/CDMA iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 2nd generation, iPod Touch 3rd generation, iPod Touch 4th generation, iPad, and iPad 2), do the following:

1. Sign in to your account using Outlook Web App. 
2. After you sign in, click Options > See All Options > Account > My Account > Settings for POP, IMAP, and SMTP access.
3. Use the setting shown under External POP setting or Internal POP setting to determine your Exchange ActiveSync server name.
   If the value next to External POP setting or Internal POP setting is in the format podxxxxx.outlook.com, your Exchange ActiveSync server name is m.outlook.com.
   If the value next to External POP setting or Internal POP setting includes your organization’s name, for example, pop.contoso.com, your server name is the same as your Outlook Web App server name, without the /owa. For example, if the address you use to access Outlook Web App is https://mail.contoso.com/owa, your Exchange ActiveSync server name is mail.contoso.com.
4. NOTE: When I setup my iPhone, the instructions provided in step 3 above did not work. I tried m.outlook.com, I also tried the external pop server name (podXXXXX.outlook.com) and that did not work. What finally DID work was using the server name specified in my Outlook Web Access URL. My URL is https://snXXXXXXXX.outlook.com/. In the server box on my iPhone, I typed snXXXXXXXX.outlook.com and all of a sudden, my iPhone started downloading from Exchange.

Feb 13, 5:31pm – After further review: All day today we have been testing Office 365 on our mobile devices. I discovered on my iPhone that if I put in a server address of m.outlook.com, it would eventually work. It just takes about 5 minutes. After my iPhone started downloading email, I went back to the server settings and discovered that the server had been automatically changed from m.outlook.com to the snXXXXXXXX.outlook.com address I originally used. But m.outlook.com is easier to type. :)

I also noticed that if I deleted the exchange account and attempted to re-add it, the iPhone would default the server to the podxxxxx.outlook.com address that I found following the steps above. If I just left that server name in the account, it would also work. But again, when I went back to settings after the email started downloading, the server had been changed automatically to the snXXXXXXXX.outlook.com address.

These server addresses did not seem to work last night. But today they do work. It may be that we just needed a little bit more time for these addresses to propagate to wherever they need to propagate to. 

I should also note that I had originally thought that the snXXXXXXXX.outlook.com address was specific to our organization’s email account on Office 365. However, we discovered today one of our employees gets directed to BLXXXXXXXX.outlook.com when they go to Outlook Web Access. And this was the only server address that would work on his phone–he could not use the address that the rest of us use. So, we cannot just send out a single server name to everyone. It appears to be mailbox dependent. But, after the rest of the testing we did, I believe that m.outlook.com would work from any of our devices.

Once this is done, your iPhone should start downloading your Mail, Contacts and Calendar items from Office 365.

If you have another device, want to setup your iPhone email using POP or IMAP, or just need more help, check out this Microsoft Office 365 Mobile Phone Setup Wizard.

This applies to: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, Office 365 for enterprises, Microsoft Exchange, Live@edu.