Now that you have a Hotmail account (you don’t? – check out create a Hotmail account for step by step instructions), we shall look at composing and sending a new email message. The process is quite simple as detailed in the steps below. Pay special attention to the screenshots if you face problems.
Step 1 – log in to your account
The Hotmail sign in page lets you login to the service with a username-password key. Once you enter your account, you shall either see the Inbox (list of email messages) or the MSN Today page. Don’t want to have the latter displayed? Read instructions on how to remove of the MSN Today page from your Hotmail account.
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Anyway, if yours is a newly created account, a single email message from the Hotmail team awaits you when you log in to you account and check Hotmail for the first time.
You account interface may be similar to the image below. The link to compose a new email is located in the Hotmail toolbar and is in fact the first one.
To start writing a new email message, click on the “New” link in the Hotmail toolbar.
Step 2 – write your email message
You are now ready to write your first email message from Hotmail. The online email composition form has three fields:
- To: This is where you specify the email address of the recipient. Later on, when you’ve added people in your Contacts List“, you can simply click on the “To:” button which opens a small pop-up that lets you choose a recipient.
- Subject: Each email message should have a subject – a one line description of the email contents. Though you can send emails without any subject I sincerely advise against it. Messages with no subjects might be considered spam at the receiver’s end and your email message would find itself pushed directly into the spam/junk folder.
- Message content: the big box below the subject field in where you type the main email message. Hotmail allows you to send rich-text emails – in other words, emails with fancy formatting, colors, web addresses, emoticons and font styles. The rich-text toolbar is located at the top of the message box.
Step 3 – sending the email
Once you are finished with the email message, you can send it to the recipient by clicking on the “Send” link located at the top. By the way, if you are called away in the midst of composing the email, you can always save and return to it later – use the “Save” link at the top.
All emails sent from Hotmail are by default stored in the “Sent” folder. You can change this action by modifying the Hotmail settings, but you shouldn’t be doing that else you shall have record past communication. By the way, when you do click on the “Send” button, the email message leaves your account immediately… there is no turning back so be careful with what you write to your boss!
Some more tips for composing and sending emails from Hotmail
Send email to more than one recipient
The easiest way to send an email to more than one person is to include all the email addresses, separated by commas, in the To: field itself. You can also employ the Cc and the Bcc fields, which are not shown by default, to send emails to multiple recipients. Click on the Show Cc & Bcc link to display these two fields. The main difference between Cc (Carbon copy) and Bcc (Blind carbon copy) is that in the latter the email addresses of the recipients are hidden from each other.
Spell check
The Hotmail spell checker works in real-time in modern web browsers which means the moment you make a spelling error it shows up with a red underline. If you are using an older (or unsupported) browser, click on the Spell check link to catch misspellings in your message.
Assigning importance to your email
Hotmail also allows you to set the level of importance for your email message. You can choose to mark your email as High or Low in the importance scale.
Attaching files with your email
Using the “Attach” link, you can attach digital files such as word processor documents, spreadsheets, photos etc. to your email. The time taken for attaching a file to the email message depends on the file size and the internet connection speed.
Well, that’s it – The information above would set you up for composing and sending emails from Hotmail. Do not be afraid of trying out new things and exploring the various features and tools of this free email service.