Setting up Outlook & Lync on a Personal Computer

If your companies IT policy allows it, you may wish to setup your corporate Exchange account on your personal computer / laptop copy of Outlook. You can then take it one step further, if you so wish, and configure Lync on the back of this.

Every company has a different setup, so some settings may need to be different, or may be blocked – but rule of the thumb – if your company has Outlook Web Access (webmail) then this should work for you.

If this is to be your only / first account you’re creating in Outlook, I would strongly suggest setting this up via the Mail control panel item, as per this walkthrough.

Pre-requisites

There are a few bits of information you’ll need before we start.

Your Exchange Server address

Your Outlook Web Access URL

Your domain & login details (those you use to log into your corporate computer / email account)

To get your Exchange Server, on your work PC, open up Outlook.

FileàAccount SettingsàAccount Settings

From the E-mail tab, select your account (probably only one listed) and select ‘Change’. You should then see a screen showing you your Server & username

To get your Outlook Web Access address, this is sometimes shown under FileàInfo screen, but ask your IT department / exchange administrator for the best address to use

Configuring Outlook

Now we can start configuring your other computer

Open your control panel and Search & Open ‘Mail’

Then Select ‘E-Mail Accounts’

On the screen which opens, select New to open the Account Setup page.

Select ‘Manual Setup or Additional Server Types’ and select Next

Select ‘Microsoft Exchange Server’ & Next

Now, you need to enter the server address from earlier, along with your username. Your user name might be your email address, or it might be the login ID you use for your Outlook / Windows account in the format <domain>\<id>

Do not click ‘Check Name’ at this point though. Instead, select More Settings

Go to the ‘Connection’ tab, and tick ‘Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP’

Select ‘Exchange Proxy Settings’

Here, you’ll want to enter your OWA address

If you know you need to, change the authentication settings, but if your Outlook username & password is the same as your company computer username & password, leaving as NTLM should be correct

Click Ok to go back, and OK again.

You should now be able to ‘Check Name’ to confirm it can connect to the server. If it’s successful, click Next to finish off.

Close all the windows, and fire up Outlook. It should now connect and begin downloading your mailbox. Remember, this may take some time.

Configuring Lync

Depending on your company’s IT setup, configuring Lync is as simple as entering your email address.

Enter your email address and select ‘Sign in’

If it can find your lync server, it’ll prompt you for your password, and you should be done.

If it doesn’t, you may need to find out your Lync Server Addresses form your Exchange Administrator / IT team.

Once you have it , open up Lync and click the Options gear icon

Then select ‘Personal’ from the list of options on the left.

Double check your email address is right, then select ‘Advanced’

Then, select ‘Manual Configuration’, and enter your server addresses.

Click OK, OK again and retry signing in – hopefully this time you’ll be prompted with a password.

If it finds the server, but can’t authenticate you, it might be because your login is different from your sign-in email address, and will give you an additional ‘User Name’ box. Populate this in the format <domain>\<id> and re-enter your password

And there you go – your Lync account is all setup

1 comment