Trouble connecting outlook to exchange server

Having some experience working in an organisation using exchange server, I feel a little embarrased asking the IT-support guy for help setting up an Exchange email account in Outlook 2013. I post the question here in order not to expose myself as someone not aware of the obvious. Heres the problem as it unfolds.

1. In outlook I press the add account button, and fill out the credentials I've received
2. Upon [next] it starts searching for the settings associated to the email-address.
And thats it. It never gets any further. At some point it quits trying to set up an encrypted connection, and unsuccesfully tries an unecrypted connection instead.

I tried
- to set up the account manually, but I haven't got the necessary information for that (only the credentials I belive is needed for automatic setup: email-address, account name and password).
- the same procedure from inside Outlook and from the control panel in Windows (8)
- to disable my antivirus        

I recon that my trouble has something to do with the fact that I am trying to set up the connection from my home-PC, and that the exchange server does not allow that. But as I said, I have no clue, and I would like to have one.

All the best, MS