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Send SMS or Text Messages to Cellular phones

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› Outlook › Send SMS or Text Messages to Cellular phones

Last reviewed on June 5, 2019     46 Comments

Many cellular carriers assign email addresses to cellular phone numbers and support SMS or text messaging by email. You don't need to install special add-ins in Outlook to send text messages, but the recipient will need text messaging enabled on their cellular plan (most carriers enable it by default) and have a phone capable of receiving text messages (most new phones are text-capable).

To use, compose a short email message using less than 160 total characters in Outlook (or any email client) and address it to the cellular number at the carrier's email domain. Remember to remove your signature from the message before sending. Note that some carriers will break apart larger messages into 160 character messages, others will deliver only the first 160 characters.

The phones only support plain text messages but the carriers strip multipart HTML, so you don't need to remember to switch to plain text format.

Email sent to cell phones is billed to the subscriber as a text message.

See Tools below for add-ins that can send SMS to phone numbers.

US Cellphones

The major US cellular carriers use the 10_digit_number@cell.carrier_domain.com format for SMS to text capable cell phones, with a limit of 160 characters in the subject and message body (total).

CarrierSend Email to phonenumber@....
Alltel@message.alltel.com
AT&T@txt.att.net
Nextel@messaging.nextel.com
Sprint@messaging.sprintpcs.com
SunCom@tms.suncom.com
T-mobile@tmomail.net
VoiceStream@voicestream.net
Verizon@vtext.com (text only)
Verizon@mypixmessages.com
Verizon@vzwpix.com (pictures and videos)

Verizon users can register an alias at vtext.com to give out instead of their phone number. Both alias@vtext.com and phone_number@vtext.com will be valid addresses for the phone.

If you don't know the carrier, enter the number in 123-456-7890 format at Reverse phone number lookup.

Web Based Interfaces

If you know the phone number and carrier, you may be able to send SMS from a web page.

Verizon https://www.vtext.com

SMS Utilities and Services

 

Tools

Appointment Reminder

Appointment Reminder is an Outlook Addin that allows you to schedule sms appointment reminders direct from Outlook Calendar.

Email to SMS

Send and receive text messages instantly from your email account with the Textmagic secure Email to SMS service.

OutlookSMS

Enables any version of Outlook to send SMS messages to mobile phone numbers listed in Outlook contacts and generate SMS appointment reminders automatically. Can also handle SMS replies back to your Inbox. Product consists of an Outlook add-in plus a service to generate the SMS messages. Does not trigger Outlook security prompts. A Lotus Notes version, NotesSMS, is also available.

Red Oxygen Office SMS

Red Oxygen Office SMS add-in allows you to send text messages from Microsoft Outlook 2013. Messages are sent from Outlook just like emails but are delivered to phones as text messages. Replies are delivered to your Outlook Inbox as emails (or to your mobile device). Office SMS can scan your Outlook calendar and automatically send appointment reminders and notifications to your cell phone as text messages. Recurring reminders are fully supported.

More Information

For a list of Outlook and Exchange Server SMS tools to forward reminders to your cellular phone, see

  • Pager, SMS, and Other Mobile Notification Tools
Send SMS or Text Messages to Cellular phones was last modified: June 5th, 2019 by Diane Poremsky

Related Posts:

  • Pager, SMS, and Other Mobile Notification Tools
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  • To Control Line Length in Internet messages
  • Changing the Reply format revisited

About Diane Poremsky

A Microsoft Outlook Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1999, Diane is the author of several books, including Outlook 2013 Absolute Beginners Book. She also created video training CDs and online training classes for Microsoft Outlook. You can find her helping people online in Outlook Forums as well as in the Microsoft Answers and TechNet forums.

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Jonah Langer (@guest_218725)
September 14, 2021 5:03 pm
#218725

Twilio offers a lookup service as well. I have worked for Kaiser Permanente which used it, as well as appointmentreminders.com . You can create an account with them (Twilio) and utilize some of their tools for free or very cheap.

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David Payne (@guest_214550)
January 3, 2020 10:16 am
#214550

A hacker has inserted his cell phone number to receive Text message to reset my email account, How can I change the cell phone back back to mine?

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Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  David Payne
January 30, 2020 12:50 am
#214690

You need to edit your Security Contact settings at https://account.microsoft.com/security/ -

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Jim (@guest_213378)
June 5, 2019 3:47 pm
#213378

The mms for Verizon (vzwpix.com) doesn't work.
If you google the problem some people say it works sporadically .
This really bugged me because I'm on my pc all day and it's quicker/easier to email than hunt down my phone to send a text message.
Then I happened to remember the old verizon server address from many many (too many) years ago and tried it. It still works!
[10 digit number]@mypixmessages.com
works for both text and pictures although I've only tried sending pics as attachment and not just pasting them into the email.
Hope this helps others too

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Alma (@guest_210437)
February 22, 2018 1:02 pm
#210437

is there anyway we can block for people to reply? I'd like to just send text reminders without people replying back. Do you know if it will reply to all?

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Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  Alma
February 28, 2018 10:36 pm
#210501

I'm not aware of a way to prevent replies - if the messages are sent to a group, they would be able to reply to all. You'd need to send to individual people or use the BCC field.

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corns (@guest_209295)
November 14, 2017 3:36 pm
#209295

If you receive an email or instant message from someone you don't know, what's the best thing to do?

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Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  corns
November 14, 2017 4:30 pm
#209296

Ignore or delete it. If they send attachments, do not open them. if they send links to attachments, do not click. If you receive an email that says you need to reset a password, type the url to the site in the browser and check it out (if its legit, the site should make you change the password). You can drag the message to the junk mail folder and view the message as plain text - this makes it easy to see the actual URLs.

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Todd (@guest_203362)
December 12, 2016 2:11 pm
#203362

Hi Diane, until today, I've been successfully receiving/replying to SMS in Outlook 2010 (via hosted MS Exchange Service). I've got android phone Galaxy Note 5, with ATT mobile service. Don't know how this got set up, but it just worked. (No third party OMS.) I cleared passwords and cache on my computer yesterday. I'm still receiving SMS, but when I reply in Outlook 2010 it asks me to set up an OMS account. Any solution?

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Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  Todd
December 12, 2016 11:41 pm
#203366

Some exchange servers have sms capability. I'd check with the exchange admin to see if you need to do something to log in to it.

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Todd (@guest_203401)
Reply to  Diane Poremsky
December 14, 2016 6:51 pm
#203401

Thank you. Tried that. Host said what I was describing was not something they offered. (They have an SMS notification option, but said it sends an sms to your phone when you get an email - the opposite of what I had.) Tried ATT, and got the same response. But it WAS working seamlessly, with no third party. ::Sigh:: Never should have cleared the cache.

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Jazz (@guest_202623)
October 29, 2016 4:38 pm
#202623

I havent been able to text using outlook

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Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  Jazz
October 30, 2016 12:55 am
#202626

if you want to use SMS, you need to subscribe to an SMS service - outlook can only send email to the phone's address, which is in the-number@carrier format.

what happens when you send a short email to a cell phone at the-number@carrier address? (You need to know their cell provider.)

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KEVIN ALESSANDRI (@guest_199235)
June 8, 2016 7:56 pm
#199235

how do I send a text to a phone my friend has and i dont know his carrier.

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Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  KEVIN ALESSANDRI
August 23, 2016 11:58 am
#201010

You'll need to either ask your friend who his carrier is or try a lookup on the phone number at a reverse look up site. Many will include the service that "owns" the 3 digit city code. However, with number portability, this isn't always correct.

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