How to Switch from Outlook to Proton Mail (2026 Guide)

Tell people about your new address#

Send a short announcement once the import is verified. Keep it factual: new address, when to start using it, when you'll stop monitoring the old one. A few practical points:

• Every Proton Mail address has a short alias on @pm.me. If your address is firstname.lastname@proton.me, mail to firstname.lastname@pm.me lands in the same inbox. Both addresses can be used to send on paid plans.
• Proton Mail enforces send-rate limits to discourage spam from new accounts. The exact thresholds change over time and depend on account history. See Proton's sending limits article for current numbers. If you have a large announcement list, send in batches over a couple of days rather than in one blast.
• Don't BCC the entire list to mask recipients. Many spam filters flag unrelated senders piling onto a single message. A short personal note to each major group lands cleaner.

If you ever want to clean up your address book separately from Easy Switch, Outlook supports a CSV export at People → Manage → Export contacts, and Proton Mail has a matching importer at mail.proton.me → Contacts → Import. Step 3's Easy Switch import already covers the round-trip, so this is only useful if you want to dedupe or reorganise contacts on your way through.

Update online accounts to use Proton#

This is the part that takes longest in calendar time but the least concentration. Work in priority order:

1. High-sensitivity first. Banks, brokerage, tax authorities, password manager recovery email, healthcare portals, government identity (BankID, ItsMe, eIDAS providers). These are the accounts where losing access matters most and where breach notifications travel by email.
2. Daily-use second. Social networks, shopping (Amazon, Bol, Coolblue), travel (airlines, booking sites), streaming. You'll spot most of these in your inbox over a normal week.
3. Long-tail third. Newsletters, mailing lists, dormant accounts. Many can simply be unsubscribed rather than ported.

Create a Proton folder called Forwarded from Outlook and route the forwarded mail there with a filter. The folder becomes a live to-do list of "who still hasn't been updated." Once it stops filling up, you know you're done.

Get the most out of Proton Mail#

Proton Mail isn't just a more private inbox. There's a small ecosystem worth knowing about.

Apps for iOS and Android#

The Proton Mail mobile apps cover the same encryption guarantees as the web client. Get them from the App Store or Google Play.

Proton Mail Bridge for desktop apps#

If you prefer Apple Mail, Thunderbird, or Outlook desktop over the Proton webapp, install Proton Mail Bridge on your Mac, Windows, or Linux machine. Bridge runs a small local IMAP/SMTP server that translates between your desktop client and Proton's encrypted protocol. Your messages stay end-to-end protected, but your existing mail client thinks it's talking to a normal IMAP server. Bridge is a paid feature.

Custom domains#

Paid plans support sending and receiving on your own domain (you@your-company.eu). The setup is standard DNS work. Add MX, SPF, DKIM, and a DMARC record at your registrar following Proton's wizard, then wait roughly 24 hours for propagation before relying on it for live mail.

Aliases#

Two flavours. Plus-tag aliases work on every Proton plan: name+netflix@proton.me arrives in the same inbox and can be filtered separately. SimpleLogin and hide-my-email aliases give you fully separate, disposable addresses on paid plans, useful for signups where you don't trust the recipient with your real address.

Folders, labels, and filters#

Proton's organisational model is labels first, folders second. A message can carry multiple labels but only one folder. Set up a few filters early. Automatic moves for newsletters, receipts, and CI/build notifications keep the inbox quiet without manual triage. The interface lives at Settings → Filters.

Proton Calendar#

Proton Calendar is a separate app on the same account. Easy Switch already brings your Outlook calendar across in step 3, but if you want to import individual .ics exports later (from a shared work calendar, for example), use Calendar → Settings → Import.

If you'd rather compare Proton Mail against the rest of the European email landscape before committing, browse our Email Services category. It lists every European-hosted email provider in the directory side-by-side.

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Closing your Outlook account safely#

Don't close the Outlook account on the same day as the import. The forwarding window in step 6 is what catches the long tail of services still emailing your old address, and that's typically a 30 to 60 day cleanup.

When you're ready, sign in at account.microsoft.com and follow Microsoft's "close my account" flow from the Profile section. The first screen asks you to confirm the account and tick a series of acknowledgements. Microsoft holds the account in a 60-day grace period before permanent deletion, useful if you discover one more service that still needed the old mailbox.

Before clicking through:

• Migrate or back up anything else tied to the Microsoft Account: OneDrive files, Skype credit, Xbox profile, Microsoft 365 subscriptions, app purchases.
• Verify your other Microsoft sign-ins (work or school accounts on a different domain) aren't accidentally on the same Microsoft Account.
• Update the recovery email and phone number on every other service that lists the Outlook address as a recovery channel.

Once the account is gone, mail sent to it bounces. There's no later recovery path beyond the 60-day window.