Set up your work email on your phone

Set aside about fifteen quiet minutes. Part way through, Microsoft asks you to prove it is you, and that is the step people abandon when they are squeezing it in between other things.

What you need: your work email address, the temporary password you were given, and your phone, charged, with room to install two apps.

Sign in to Outlook

1. Open Outlook.
2. Tap Add Account.
3. Type your work email address and tap Continue.
4. Enter the temporary password.
5. If it asks you to set a new password, do that now. Pick something you have never used anywhere else.

Prove it is you

Microsoft will say more information is required. That is normal, and it only happens once.

1. Tap Next until it offers Microsoft Authenticator.
2. If the phone offers to open the Authenticator app for you, let it. It sets itself up and this step is done.
3. If instead you see a QR code, you cannot scan it, because the code and the camera are on the same phone. Tap Can't scan the image and note the code and web address it shows you. Switch to Authenticator, tap the + at the top, choose Work or school account, tap Enter code manually, and type them in.
4. Go back to the sign-in screen, tap Next, and approve the test notification when Authenticator asks.

From now on, signing in somewhere new sends a notification to Authenticator asking whether it is you. If one ever arrives when you are not signing in to anything, tap No, it's not me and then tell us. It means somebody else has your password.

Check the mail is arriving

Your messages should now be listing in Outlook. Send yourself a note from another address to be certain it lands. If you were also given access to a shared mailbox, that is a separate step: The shared mailbox is missing in Outlook.

Decide how much it interrupts you

1. In Outlook, tap your profile picture or initials in the top left.
2. Tap the gear icon to open settings.
3. Tap Notifications and pick how much you want to be told about.

Worth doing on day one. A phone that pings all shift gets silenced altogether, and then the one message that mattered gets missed too.

Worth knowing

• It is on your phone, but it is still work email. If you lose the phone, tell us the same day. We can sign that phone out remotely and it takes minutes.
• Do not forward work mail to a personal address. Once it leaves, we cannot protect it or pull it back.
• The phone's built-in Mail app is not the same thing. Use Outlook. It is the one we can help you with, and the one the protections are set up around.