How do I customise my Hotmail account using themes and photos?

There are different ways in which you can customize Hotmail account to suit your requirements. In this tip we shall look at personalizing Hotmail through themes and uploading a photo. FYI, you can also change the name you provided at the time of creating a Hotmail account – but why would you?

Hotmail themes – select the color and images for your account

The default color scheme on Hotmail accounts is a light blue called Windows Live. However, there are several more Hotmail themes available with which you can change the interface color and images.

The following is a list of the themes available at Hotmail:

• Bamboo: A green colored theme with images of bamboo leaves and stems.
• Cherry Blossoms: Pink all over, as the name suggests. Girly!
• Flourish: Red and deep pink images … for the fairer sex, I suppose.
• Mesmerising Brown (Dark): A brownish color scheme with images of circles – for the more serious user! Originally called Circular
• Dottie Orange: A bright orange interface – quite frankly, a pain-in-the-eyes, if you know what I mean. Was known as Dottie originally.
• Violet Springtime (Light): Deep purple theme with flower images. Old name – Floral.
• Victorian Gray (Light): Bland, unattractive but, yes, sober… quite sober.

Choosing a theme for your Hotmail account is quite simple. Go to the “Options” link on the right and then select a one from the drop down. As you move your mouse cursor over a thumbnail, the whole interface will change dynamically to show how the theme looks.

Update: Recently, several new hotmail themes were introduced including dynamic ones that change with the time of the day or the weather at your location. I suppose this was Hotmail’s reply to the feature of creating your own themes in Gmail.

Upload your photo and add to your Hotmail profile

Another way to personalize your Hotmail account is to upload your photo and add it to your profile. To do this, follow the steps below paying special attention to the screenshots.

Click on your name which brings up a drop down menu. Select the “Change picture” option.

You will now be taken to a page through which you can change your profile photo. Click the “Choose File” button which opens a pop-up window. Browse to the directory that contains your photo (actually, you can use any picture not necessarily yours) – refer the images below.

As long as the image you are selecting is less than 4MB, your photo will be uploaded successfully.

Now comes the interesting part. On upload, you shall be shown the image, you can pan the orange border rectangle to select the area that you want to put on your profile. Click on the “Save” button when done.

You will find yourself in the Live.com profile page. Click on the “Mail” link on top to return to Hotmail only to find (hurray) your photo instead of the default blank image. Cool!

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