I've had a lot of questions this week asking how to enable Live Tile support in Outlook 2013. Unfortunately, the answer is "sorry, it's not supported".
If you want live tiles for your email, you'll need to configure the Windows 8 Mail and Calendar apps. Yes, you'll get double alerts unless you disable alerts in one of the programs (and you'll download all mail in duplicate). The apps are not as robust as Outlook and when you open the tile or click on the Mail alert, you'll open the message in Mail, not Outlook.
Actually, the calendar app, while not as powerful as Outlook has one advantage over Outlook 2013: you can dock it on the edge of a wide-screen monitor and see your upcoming appointments. It's a lot nicer than pinning a Peek open.
While we may see a Live Tile for Outlook in the future, I don't expect to see Live Tiles for Outlook (or Lync) added anytime soon.
Configure Windows 8 Apps
To configure the Windows 8 apps, type Mail on the Start Screen (or in the Search field of the Charm bar).
If its the first time you've used mail, you'll be asked to enter your email address and password then follow the short wizard.
If you already have an account setup in Windows 8 Mail, open Mail, then the Charm bar and choose Accounts to add additional accounts.
Turn off notifications
To turn off notifications for the Windows apps (to avoid duplicate notifications):
- Open the Charm bar.
- Select Settings, then Change PC Settings.
- Select Notifications.
- Turn off Notifications for Calendar and Mail.
- You can turn off notification for Outlook if desired.
Evan H says
Do you know why the windows mail app and gmail dont get along?
Diane Poremsky says
They should work ok together if you use IMAP as google ended EAS support. Was the account set up as EAS or IMAP?
rich says
Not having a live tile with Outlook 2013 is pathetic much as the lack of a notifier has been in all previous versions. Come on MS wtf....
Dr Robert Schertzer (@robschertzer) says
Unfortunately, the lack of an Outlook 2013 live tile is a major issue as far as I'm concerned unless Microsoft would consider removing its 10 ActiveSync connection limit for Exchange Servers or changing the way the new Mail app works so that it can use a proper Exchange connection instead of Active Sync. I have an iPhone, an iPad, as well as two android devices. Now that I am adding Windows 8 desktop and laptop computers, I quickly realized that the Mail app in Windows 8 uses ActiveSync only so that I have run out of allowable activesync connections making it impossible to actually use the Mail or Calendar apps in Windows 8 on more than 2 of my computers (in fact, I have disable email on my android devices just so I can have Mail and Calendar on two laptops.)
Diane Poremsky says
I know they will not add native exchange to the mail client. It would make it heavy, like outlook is.
Re the 10 device limit. You need to speak with your admin - the default policy for EASMaxDevices is 10, but it can be raised (or lowered).