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I want to add a new email account to Outlook 2016. I cannot find any input field where I can add a username. Obviously Outlook takes the email address as username - but this is not accepted by my hosting provider.

This is the dialogue for adding an IMAP account:

enter image description here

As you see, there is no field to add a username. The next page asks for password - but there's also no username input possible.

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  • Ok. What happens if you click “not you?” At the top? Also, you can proceed to complete the installation of the account and then edit the settings afterwards. Jan 8, 2019 at 17:43
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    Unfortunately, the wizard does not allow to complete the setup before the account has been checked successfully. "Not you" brings me back to the beginning of the setup.
    – ESP32
    Jan 8, 2019 at 18:47
  • Here is a great tutorial: multimediaxp.com/post/37/…
    – Eddy XP
    May 23, 2019 at 20:36

3 Answers 3

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I have just found it out... To run the setup without the Outlook wizard, goto:

File > Information > Account Settings > Manage Profiles

enter image description here

This window will open:

enter image description here

Click "Email Accounts" and setup your account manually:

enter image description here

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  • Good answer. 'Manage profiles' may give a UAC credential prompt on a domain where the user is not administrator. Mar 8, 2019 at 13:58
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    Fantastic - had spent ages hunting for this (thank you Microsoft for suddenly making this v difficult)
    – MandyShaw
    Jun 7, 2020 at 9:43
  • Further to my comment about needing privileged user authorisation and p-schneider's comment below, here's a method to launch the control panel without needing administrator privileges: a) launch Windows Explorer; b) navigate to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\" or similar; c) launch "mlcfg32.cpl". This page may help: greennet.org.uk/support/set-greennet-email-account-outlook-2016 Jul 17, 2020 at 10:54
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    Excellent find! Note also that if this feature is preventing you from even launching outlook, it can be started with outlook.exe /PIM NoEmail and you can then add your account as above.
    – Nomic
    Dec 24, 2020 at 4:23
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Until MSOutlook version 16.0.11231.20164 was released in February 2019, it was also possible in these 'Simplified Account Creation' dialogues to prompt for the user name by entering an empty password. For that version and maybe others, unless there is text in the password field the Connect button is greyed out. Therefore any attempt to set up an IMAP account using the 'Simplified Account Creation' wizard will not prompt for username and will fail. There is a registry key to return to more familiar behaviour:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Setup]
"DisableOffice365SimplifiedAccountCreation"=dword:00000001

This registry change is also the solution to this question as far as Windows goes. That question is also solved for Mac (hold Option down).

Outlook version 2013 and earlier versions of Outlook 2016 included the traditional 'Add account' and 'Email accounts' dialogue shown in Gerfried's answer. Then the software with the same name forced use of the wizard, but that still asked for 'User Name', and in the middle of 2018 it stopped prompting for User Name. The wizard has an 'advanced setup' that allows configuration of non-default ports, but nothing to configure login name. At present it seems therefore a bug means 'Manage profiles' (as in Gerfried's answer, or run mlcfg32.cpl) is the only way to add IMAP accounts without editing the registry. This may require administrator privileges.

I'm still not sure if this is related to autodiscover features, or whether 'Microsoft Office 365 Support and Recovery Assistant' may be a workaround. Microsoft Outlook traditionally included email functions, although it usually favoured proprietary Microsoft Exchange and now Office365 servers. Is there any explanation or announcement from them about withdrawing support for normal (generic POP/IMAP) email?

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  • empty password did the trick!
    – Julian
    Nov 14, 2019 at 8:56
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    mlcfg32.cpl can be found in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\MLCFG32.CPL" or similar, depending on the version of Office and Windows (32/64-bit). (So it's not stored with the other *.cpl files in system32, at least not in my case.) May 7, 2020 at 12:54
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Moreover, you can also get the classy GUI, which still distinguished between the email and your username, by running outlook.exe /manageprofiles in the windows commandline (cmd).

Select Email accounts... afterwards.

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