Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
MSN Hotmail will delete your information, and even delete your account, if you don't use it often enough. I cover those numbers, and what you should really be doing instead anyway.
I'm about to go on a trip for a while, and I want to make sure I don't lose any of my on-line information. I keep a lot of important emails and contact information in my MSN Hotmail account. If I don't login for a while, how soon will Hotmail discard it?
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You keep important things in your Hotmail account?
And only in your Hotmail account?
SIGH
In case you haven't guessed, that's one of my pet peeves. Let's look at why, and what you should be doing. And we'll answer your question too.
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The answer to your specific question is easy. From MSN Hotmail's on-line help:
If you don't sign in to your Hotmail account for more than 30 days, or within the first 10 days after signing up for a new account, all messages, folders, and contacts are marked for deletion, but the account name is still reserved. If the account stays inactive for a further 90 days, the account name is permanently deleted.
Let's analyze that a bit.
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If you create a Hotmail account, and then don't use it for 10 days, your email and contacts are deleted.
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If you've been using your Hotmail account and for some reason fail to login for 30 days, your email and contacts are deleted.
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If you fail to login for 90 days the account name will be deleted - meaning that someone else could come along and create a new account, reusing that same name.
What's this "marked for deletion" thing? What it means is that your email might not actually be deleted on (say) the 31st day of inactivity - but it could be, when Hotmail gets around to it.
And once deleted, it cannot be recovered.
So now that I've answered your question, why am I so concerned about you keeping important things only in your Hotmail account?
Because I regularly get reports of people losing important information from their MSN Hotmail accounts. Be it because of account inactivity as I've discussed here, connectivity issues, accounts being lost or hacked ... it's a regular occurrence.
And there's no recourse.
I strongly encourage you to read my article on free email accounts: Are free email services worth it? for more details, and what I believe you need to be doing instead.
But if you insist on staying with only Hotmail, then yes, make sure you login at least once every 30 days, or your information my be irretrievably lost.
Article C2821 - October 25, 2006
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 haven't logged into my account for over 5 years, and emailing it gives system undeliverable. I try to create a new account using that name, and it says unavailable. Any idea whats up?
Posted by: Noah at January 10, 2011 11:58 AMi havent logged on to my account for nine months. And before that over a year. Today i remembered my password and my account is still there, and spam keeps filling the inbox.
26-Feb-2011
Posted by: andy at February 25, 2011 5:27 PM
How long does your msn email address stay active for? 9 months ago my friends msn email address was closed and now all of a sudden it's working again, could it be my friend or a different person? i'm not getting any answer.
Posted by: Carla at May 5, 2011 5:41 AM@Carla: the answer to your question can be found in the article,
Posted by: Mark J at May 5, 2011 5:48 AMI delete my hotmail account on hotmail and the service of windows live and don't opened since. ( I did all the steps, good) But I open a different account before delete this one and make as a friend on windows live the account I was about to delete... But when open this new account on live messenger the old account it's still there... I don't want to go to the old account and try to delete again,(since I know if I do this will reactive it) but my question is...How long does it takes to be delete? I read your post and say 90 days but...it's not just inactive I DELETE... following all the steps.. on 29 July 2011.. It's also 90 days? And can someone still send messages to this old account? Thanks in advance
Posted by: @Angel at August 13, 2011 11:13 AM