Hotmail setup to download emails using Windows Live Mail

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Windows Live Mail, latest email client from Microsoft, is a successor of their popular Outlook Express. With the discontinuation of the development and support for the older program, the company recommends users of Windows XP and Vista operating systems to download and install Windows Live Mail because it allows for multiple account setup including those from Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail.

Hotmail setup on Windows Live Mail is a very simple three step process. Since the two products are from the same company, you need very basic information to download Hotmail emails to your computer.

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Setup your online Hotmail account on Windows Live Mail

Start the email program – if you don’t have it, refer how to download Windows Live Mail and install on your system.

Add an e-mail account button in Windows Live Mail email programClick on the “Add an e-mail account” button or hit “Tools” -> “Accounts” -> “Add” -> “E-mail Account” -> “Next“.

In the pop-up window, enter your Hotmail email address (the complete address), the password of your account and a display name. The display name can be your own name or anything you want. Leave the “Manually configure server settings for e-mail account” alone – make sure there is no checkmark in this box! Now move to the next screen.

Enter your email address, password and display name to setup the Hotmail account on Windows Live Mail email client

Hurray! Setup of your Hotmail account on Windows Live Mail is complete… yes, that was it!
From the confirmation screen, you can also choose to set this Hotmail account as the default in Windows Live Mail program. Click on the “Finish” button when done. Technically, Hotmail setup was a single step and not a 3 step process as I mentioned in the beginning!

Note: The email program understands (from your email address) that the account you are setting up is a Hotmail account and will get other information such as mail server address, port number etc. on its own.

When the Hotmail account has been setup, Windows Live Mail connects to the online server and tries to retrieve all your messages. Any folders (even the ones that you’ve created) will be downloaded along with their emails. Thus, you should see the five default Hotmail folders and any other that you have created in the email client – refer image below.

Hotmail account added to Windows Live Mail with all folders and email messages

The advantage

The main advantage of adding your Hotmail account on Windows Live Mail email client is the storage of email messages on your computer. Thus, you do not need an active internet connection to view your older emails. Also, if anything does happen to your online account (it’s hacked, God forbid), you can rest assured that you have a copy on your computer.

How many Hotmail accounts can be setup on Windows Live Mail?

I don’t know but I suppose there is no particular limit (as long as it’s a reasonable number). For example, I have a couple of Hotmail accounts added to the email client – one is a personal account and the other is for my business. So you can setup more than one Hotmail accounts in Windows Live Mail.

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