365 Email - OWA - Outlook Web Access Usage and Settings

Overview

Outlook is the classic program used for accessing emails, but over the last few years major improvements have been made to Outlook Web Access system (OWA) that sees it performing vastly better than the classic desktop client.

On your first access of the OWA, there are a few settings you will want to modify to ensure your OWA experience matches that of a traditional desktop outlook.

Accessing OWA

Open your browser and type:

https://outlook.office365.com/

Login with your Office 365 email account. If this is your first time, you will need to select your time zone first.

Once loaded, your inbox should look similar to your Outlook client - the same folder structure will be present.

Installing as an App

If you have opened OWA within Microsoft Edge, you can install this as a convenient app to make it easier to launch in the future.

While on the OWA page, click the ... in the top right hand corner. Mouse down to Apps and from the menu select "Install Outlook".

This will open the website via an Edge based app, which can be pinned to your task bar for quick access in the future. Right-click the newly opened "Outlook" icon and select "pin to taskbar".

This will now open your OWA inbox in its own segmented window, isolated from the rest of your browser sessions.

Desktop Notifications

To ensure your OWA experience matches your standard outlook as much as possible, we recommend to always enable the desktop notifications. 

This setting only needs to be configured once per browser, as these settings will be saved.

  1. Within OWA, click on the COG icon in the top right and toggle on the "Desktop Notifications"

2. Your browser will likely block these notifications by default.

3. To resolve this, click on the blocked bell icon and click "Allow for this site"

4. When a new email is received, you will receive a notification similar to the Outlook program, no matter what application you are within

Showing the From or BCC field in all emails

Within OWA you have the same functionality when it comes to sending an email as another inbox.

To enable the From and/or BCC field permanently in every new email you send:

  1. Click on the COG icon in the top right
  2. At the bottom of this side bar menu, click "View all Outlook settings"
  3. In the prompt, click on "Compose and Reply" and checkmark the Message Format option you would like to always show - From, BCC or both
  4. Click the Save button at the bottom of the window to save these changes.

Adding Additional Mailboxes (Shared Mailboxes)

Within OWA you have full access to all of the mailboxes you can access within Outlook.

We have a separate guide for this as this is a popular request, please see 365 Email Access - Open an additional/shared inbox from Web Access (OWA)

Other Settings

Similar to Outlook, you can control how your reading pane appears, if emails are "marked as read" once you click off them, adding users to junk email, adding users to safe senders - almost every option within Outlook is available within the "View all Outlook settings" option on the COG menu.

You are also able to setup:

An Out of Office Message

Inbox Rules

In addition to setting up new rules, all existing rules created within Outlook will be operational within OWA

Support

If you are having issues with the above instructions, please contact our helpdesk support team on the details below: