Switch your Xfinity Email from POP to IMAP on Windows Live Mail

Learn how to switch the Xfinity Email account setup from POP to IMAP on Windows Live Mail.

Please note the following:

• The instructions contained in this article only apply to users who have already configured their Xfinity Email accounts via POP.
  • In addition, this guide assumes that while setting up your email through POP, you chose not to retain emails in the server after downloading them to the email client.
• To learn more about using third-party email clients (e.g., Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc.) to access your Comcast.net email address, please see Enable/Disable Third-Party Client Access to Comcast.net Email – FAQs.

Pre-setup

1. Right click on the configured account and click Properties.
2. In the Properties window, click on the Servers tab to verify that the incoming mail server type is set to POP.
   
   
   
3. Click on the Advanced tab.
4. Under the Delivery header, check if the Leave a copy of messages on server checkbox is selected. If not, check the checkbox and click OK.
   

Switch from POP to IMAP

1. On the Live Mail home page, click Add Email under the Accounts tab.
2. When the Add your email accounts window appears, enter your Comcast email address and password.
3. Check the Manually configure server settings checkbox. Then, click Next.
   
   
   
4. Select IMAP from the drop-down menu and enter the following server details. Then, click Next:
   • Server address (incoming): imap.comcast.net
   • Port: 993
   • Server address (outgoing): smtp.comcast.net
   • Port: 465
     
     
     
5. If successful, the Your email account was added window will be displayed. Click the Finish button to exit.
   

Move emails from the POP to IMAP profile

If the option to delete emails from server was initially chosen during POP account configuration, emails would have been deleted from the mail server as they were downloaded to the email client, so the newly configured IMAP account will not contain these emails.

To avoid losing these emails during the switch from POP to IMAP, you must select the emails contained in the various folders (inbox, sub folders, trash or sent items) on your POP account, and drag and drop them into the respective folder within your newly configured IMAP account. To be safe, you can also move and store these emails in an external folder.

For additional details on how to move these folders in Live Mail, please visit the Microsoft How-to page.

Delete the POP profile

After your existing emails have been moved from your POP account to their corresponding newly configured IMAP folders (and after ensuring that no emails are missing), you can delete the existing POP-configured profile and its respective folders from your mail client. Then, continue using Xfinity Email through your new IMAP profile.