Download Hotmail emails - Windows Live Mail email client

Why do you need to download Hotmail emails?

Hotmail, now known as Windows Live Hotmail, is a free web based email service from Microsoft. It offers 5GB of storage space which means you can pile up thousands of emails in your account over time. The advantage of an online email account is that it's accessible from anywhere, from any computer as long as it's connected to the internet. The flip side is, without an active net connection, forget checking for new messages, you cannot get your hands on the older emails! Also, if you have vital and crucial information stored on your Hotmail account, any disruption in the service (it's happened before) or accidental deletion of messages can spell disaster.

So what is the best solution? Download Hotmail emails and maintain a copy of the messages on your computer. So you end up with an online version that is accessible from anywhere and an "offline" one with the email messages lying cosy and safe on your system.

No forwarding and POP access for download if you use a free Hotmail account

An easy way to maintain a copy of your Hotmail emails is to have them forwarded to another email account. Unfortunately, forwarding to email boxes out of Microsoft owned domains is not allowed on free Hotmail accounts. Also, POP access (which is free on Gmail - refer Gmail using POP on Outlook Express) is only available on Hotmail Plus accounts, not the free ones.

Those who can spend about $20 per year on a Hotmail Plus account... great! You can get a POP access through which you can download all your emails quickly using any email program. Others, and this probably means more than 90% of us, need not despair. You can still download Hotmail messages with a cool free email program called Windows Live Mail - and you've guessed it right... it's from Microsoft.

Update: Free Hotmail POP access has been allowed for users of some countries. As per Microsoft, this feature is being rolled out gradually and would probably be available to all free Hotmail users soon.

Download Hotmail emails with Windows Live Mail

Windows Live Mail is a free email program from Microsoft that is meant to replace their famous and extremely popular Outlook Express client. FYI, the download and support for Outlook Express has been discontinued by the company and they recommend you use the new Windows Live Mail.

Windows Live Mail, is much more than an email client - it is also a RSS reader, a news client, a blogging tool and offers many enhancements over Outlook Express. Vista users may have encountered another email client called Windows Mail (yes, I know the names and very similar), that comes preinstalled on the operating system. Unfortunately, Microsoft has discontinued supporting that too!

As per the company, the new Windows Live mail email program is the future because it employs the DeltaSynch which is far superior to DAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning) protocol employed on Outlook Express and Windows Mail. Furthermore, in this email client you can configure multiple accounts including those from Gmail and yes, Hotmail!

To download Hotmail emails and store them on your computer, you need to download Windows Live Mail, install it and perform the basic steps for Hotmail setup on the program - really a simple affair; you'll find details instructions on this web site if you face a problem.

Can any email program be used to download Hotmail emails?

Hotmail free accounts have no forwarding (to non-Microsoft email addresses) or POP options (Update: available to users of some countries now) - these are offered only for Hotmail Plus users. There was a time when Hotmail accounts could be configured in Microsoft Outlook Express but that has been discontinued. As of now, I've Hotmail settings added to Windows Live Mail program through which I download Hotmail emails. I haven't tried other emails programs so I am at a loss to answer whether other email clients would work or not. However, I know Windows Mail (the default email client on Vista) and Outlook Express are no longer supported with this online service especially if you have created an account recently.

Conclusion: You can use the free Windows Live Mail program not just for Hotmail but also for downloading Gmail emails to your computer. In fact you can configure in multiple email accounts in the program. Furthermore, Windows Live Mail works also as an RSS reader, a blogging tool and a News client. I've been using the program for many months now on my Vista Home Premium computer and have never faced a problem (hold on... let me cross my fingers).