Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
Changing your Hotmail user name, not your email address, is easy. Here's how.
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Hotmail automatically fills in the "From:" address in the mail you send with your email address, and your name.
Changing your name is actually fairly simple, but getting exactly what you want? Not so much.
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To change your user name, sign in to Hotmail, and then click the Options link in the upper right:
Then click on Personal on the list that shows up on the far left, and then click on My Profile.
On the resulting page you'll find places to put your First name and Last name. Those are combined to become the name that is displayed with your email address on the "From:" line in your sent email.
So change those, click save, and you're done. Right?
Not quite. There are two potential issues.
First, you might need to sign out and sign back in again for the changes to "take". The change took immediately for me when I tried it out for this article, but I've also read of people experiencing delays.
Another problem I did experience is that I was unable to erase my name. The erase "took" - my name showed up as "Leo" with no last name, but the test emails I sent still said "Leo Notenboom".
My assumption, then, is that the first and last name cannot be blank - they need to be set to something. Setting the last name to a period, for example, worked. So if your email address is "example@hotmail.com" you might consider setting your "First name" to "example", and your last name to "@hotmail.com", which would simply duplicate the email address information your recipient already sees.
Article C2500 - December 24, 2005
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
I keep recieving group emails from my work and i used to have my display name for emails as "King Cobra." Now I want it to say my name. It is a bit embarrasing seeing that my work contacts can see "King Cobra." I have looked all over msn and changed it. But it still comes up as my email name. How can I help this?
Posted by: Dom at March 14, 2009 10:10 AMthis is nuts, my sister has an hotmail account, in her personal info her name displays correctly, but when she sends an email, the name is someone elses...someone she commented to on facebook. How did the name swich? we have gone through everything in her hotmail and it is all correct. how can we get her name back?
Posted by: max at March 16, 2009 9:01 AMHi Sir,
How can I set up my outgoing address in the option (not using outlook etc.) to make it like my business address e.g. Leog@mycompanyname.com
thanks
Posted by: liulang at October 7, 2009 6:31 PMI need to change my email address because Iam receiving up to or more than 100 junk emails per day.
13-Feb-2011
Posted by: Roger at February 12, 2011 2:53 PM
***July 1st 2011 using Windows Live
1. Look at your top RIGHT corner. Your existing name should be there.
2. Click on it and select "options" in the drop down menu.
3. On the left hand side, there should be three options "general", "mail", and "privacy".......click on "mail".
4. Under the subheading "managing your account", click on "Account details (password, aliases, time zone)"
5. Now you'll have a page that shows all your information. To the LEFT of your existing name should be a "change" option. Click it.
6. Change your name/alias and then click "save".
7. You're Done! Email yourself to double check.
Posted by: Shannon B. at July 1, 2011 1:32 PM