Summary: Microsoft recently, finally, enabled POP3 and SMTP access to Hotmail accounts. I'll walk you through the settings.
How do I use Hotmail with my desktop email program? It wants something about POP3 and SMTP - what should I put in to get Hotmail?
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One of the most requested items here at Ask Leo! are the POP3 and SMTP settings for Hotmail, so that arbitrary mail clients and portable devices could be used to access Windows Live Hotmail.
Until now the answer has been "there aren't any officially supported".
That's changed.
And it's about time.
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I'll walk through setting up Outlook Express to access a Hotmail account so you can see what the settings are and where to set them. If you use another email program you can use this information as appropriate therein.
In Outlook Express click on the Tools menu, Accounts... menu item, the Add button, and then the Mail... item. That should get you here:
Enter the name you would like displayed along side your email address on outgoing messages and click Next.
Enter your Hotmail email address and click Next.
Make sure that "My incoming mail server is a POP3 server" is selected, and enter:
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pop3.live.com for the Incoming mail server
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smtp.live.com for the Outgoing mail server
Click Next.
Enter your full Hotmail email address as the Account name, and your Windows Live Hotmail password as the Password. Click Next.
At this point Outlook Express will tell you that you are done, but in fact you are not. There are additional steps required. Go ahead and click Finish.
You should be left at your Internet Accounts dialog box:
Click on the newly created account, and then click on the Properties button.
In the resulting Properties dialog box, click on the Advanced tab.
Make sure that both cases of "This server requires a secure connection (SSL)" are checked. At that point the server port numbers should be 25 for SMTP, and 995 for POP3.
NOTE: I've heard reports that 25 may not always work for SMTP, in which case use port 587. Similarly, some email programs will call out both SSL and TLS separately. If SSL on both port 25 and 587 doesn't work, try TLS.
If you want: check "Leave a copy of messages on server". If you leave this unchecked mail will be downloaded or moved to Outlook Express and will not be visible on the Hotmail web interface. If you check it, then messages will be available in both places (but you'll have to delete in both places as well).
Now click on the Servers tab.
Under "Outgoing Mail Server" make sure that My server requires authentication is checked. (You can also double-check the Settings button, but the default of "Use same settings as my incoming mail server" is correct.)
That's it!
Go check for new mail in Outlook Express, or whatever email program you did this with, and you should be good to go.
(When I did this it did appear to work very slowly, and perhaps even have some limitations on the number of messages downloaded. But it's a start.)
I'll say it again: It's about time.
Related:
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What is POP? Or POP3? Or a POP account? And what about SMTP? POP, POP3 and SMTP are all acronyms that you might see used when talking about configuring email. We'll look at what they mean, and how they relate.
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How do I download my Windows Live Hotmail to my machine? Windows Live Hotmail
has no POP3 or SMTP settings with which to download your mail.However if you use certain mail programs, you can still download. -
Are free email services worth it? Free email services and accounts are convenient and ubiquitous. But free email services aren't the right place to keep your important information.
Article C3647 - February 11, 2009
I must say that I spent four hours trying to figure this out and this is the correct steps that you need to follow and it resolved my pain and headache to solving the issue with outlook 6 setup.
Posted by: William at October 11, 2009 2:20 PMThank you so much! I've tried everything up until now, and finally I find something that works!!! Thanks you so much! Way to go!
Posted by: Emi Blacke at October 15, 2009 1:33 PMPerfect explaination. After trying many searches I came across your help and it worked. Perfect as I love using outlook express and now I can read my hotmails trough this and send too. Brilliant and Thank you
Posted by: Wendy Oliver Beavis at October 18, 2009 8:58 AMAWESOME!! I've spent AGES searching this afternoon for a solution and this is the only one that worked! Well done! Thanks!
Posted by: Kylie at October 23, 2009 12:28 AMI followed the steps using the windows boxes. So easy. However it needed port 587 to work in my case.
Posted by: Derek Rogers at October 28, 2009 5:36 AMMany many thanks.
Tried 25 an 587 neither will work. Won't let me enter TLS. Any ideas on another port?
Posted by: Martie Kennedy at October 30, 2009 4:34 AMThanks -- my hotmail and msn mail accounts stopped working in Outlook Express when Microsoft ended HTTP server support on Sept 1, 2010. Your article helped me to restore access via Outlook Express by using the POP3 settings.
Posted by: Jeff at October 30, 2009 7:23 AMI've tried all advice given here for thunderbid but all i can do is get mail no sending mail. get msg saying smtp server not acepting
Posted by: brasstown at October 30, 2009 11:08 AMHi All,
brillant! while some other sites pretend that no solution works well....
Posted by: Alain at November 3, 2009 3:51 AMWorks fine here, I have Outlook 2007 and Vista, the tabs are slightly in diferent order but it was easy to set up all. Works fine, but on second day port 25 on SMTP was refused, changed it to 587. Also, you may tick the box 'connect to incoming server before sending mail". This helped in my case, may be because I have Spamhilator pluged onto the mail system.
Thanks for this solution
Changed port 25 to 587 and all is working now. Thanks
Posted by: wrench at November 12, 2009 10:26 PM