K9 Mail App - IMAP or Exchange Hotmail

[erikk00]

So I was planning on using K9 in place of the stock email client but lo and behold it appears that K9 and hotmail don't play nice together. I can only seem to get hotmail connected as a POP3 account. Does anyone know if there is any way to get K9 connected to hotmail as either IMAP or exchange?

I've tried manually setting it up as IMAP and Exchange with m.hotmail.com and m.live.com as the server with the default ports k9 chooses but nothing seems to be working. Are there specific weird ports that have to be used? A different server name?

Suggestions along the lines of forward mail to gmail, gmail is better, etc etc that don't involve K9 connecting to hotmail directly are not necessary or helpful. I know all of the other "options" but I need to either connect K9 to hotmail directly or not use k9 and stick with the stock email client which seems to connect to hotmail just fine (I'm hoping I can switch to k9).

I found this old thread about the issue and necroed it but not sure it's in the right place anyway: http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-htc-thunderbolt-forums/72925-k9-mail-app-imap-hotmail.html

 

[epidenimus]

Your problem lies not with K-9, but with Microsoft. They design their products to be incompatible with everything they don't make. The only reason the stock email app works is because Google or the OEMs pay MS license fees to incorporate ActiveSync. I don't think hotmail has supported IMAP since MS took it over.

 

[erikk00]

Yeah but they have supported Exchange ActiveSync since mid 2011. Apparently this is a K9/Kaiten coding issue:

https://codethis.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/building-k-9-mail-with-exchange-activesync-support/

I guess at this point I'm either looking for a new all-in-one email client or waiting on K9 to update to support it. Thanks for your help.

 

[epidenimus]

Yeah but they have supported Exchange ActiveSync since mid 2011.

...via WebDAV, which is disabled by default in Exchange installations. IMAP is also disabled by default in most Exchange installations. This is the same reason I cannot use Evolution for my work e-mail. Exchange is effectively Outlook Server, unless you want to pay more for a client with full ActiveSync.

EDIT: I certainly understand why you would like K-9 (Hell, I'd like to use it just because of the Doctor Who theme.) I mostly use the stock client because it works with my work account. If you are annoyed by EAS controlling your device or the stupid lockscreen, there are ways around it.

 

[erikk00]

EDIT: I certainly understand why you would like K-9 (Hell, I'd like to use it just because of the Doctor Who theme.)

I'm not going to lie, that's at least half the reason I gravitated to K9 first as an alternate email client.

Exchange is effectively Outlook Server, unless you want to pay more for a client with full ActiveSync.
...
I mostly use the stock client because it works with my work account. If you are annoyed by EAS controlling your device or the stupid lockscreen, there are ways around it.

Actually I'm not really concerned about EAS controlling my device or the lockscreen (don't think my hosted exchange does anything with that) but was just looking to get some of the nicer functionality of K9 for my everyday email usage. I would be willing to pay for an email client if it gave me all the positives without limitations. I guess I now need to figure out if there is any email client out there that does what I need and which is best.

I need 2 IMAP accounts (google and corporate google apps), a corporate hosted exchange account and a hotmail account. At very least I want IMAP functionality from all (ie read/unread updated across all clients, sent messages show up everywhere etc) and I want a unified inbox for all.