The Need-to-Know Summary:

DNR does not allow managing your Outlook e-mails from any personal device (Android or otherwise) because to do so would put your personal device completely under the Georgia Open Records Act (GORA) and make everything on your personal device -- e-mails, text messages, images, everything -- discoverable under any GORA request.

The Details:

From time to time we get questions such as, "Is it possible to obtain the information (such as server name) necessary to set up (POP) access to my Outlook mail for my Android phone/tablet?"

The short answer is: If you do not want the entire world to be able to access your complete personal phone records (including text messages), then don't go there.

Here's the big argument AGAINST using an Outlook client on a personal device, and the position DNR takes.

We do not allow managing your Outlook e-mails from any personal device (Android or otherwise) because to do so would put your personal device completely under the Georgia Open Records Act and make everything on your personal device -- e-mails, text messages, images, everything -- discoverable under any open records request.

I don't think you want to open your personal life up to such potential scrutiny to the whole world.

That being said, there is a difference between using an Internet browser to examine your Outlook e-mails and using an Outlook client on any machine to download your e-mails to it.

Accessing your Outlook e-mails through https://outlook.com/gets.ga.gov simply gives you a look into your Outlook e-mails without downloading the e-mails to your computer or device. Therefore, using this web mail access would not subject your device to any open records requests. You could thus check your e-mail from a computer at your public library and not subject that machine to GORA.

That's why I do not have the Outlook client installed on my home computer; I use the webmail link instead.

Some things we cannot do with Outlook webmail is save e-mails to your archive, or access your archive.

To use the URL https://outlook.com/gets.ga.gov to access your e-mails on your device, just log in with your user name and password and you're in to your e-mails.

 Without running into GORA . . . .