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What are Windows Live Hotmail's POP3 and SMTP settings?

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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?

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.

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:

Adding a Windows Live Hotmail account to Outlook Express: Step 1 - Your Name

Enter the name you would like displayed along side your email address on outgoing messages and click Next.

Adding a Windows Live Hotmail account to Outlook Express: Step 2 - your Hotmail address

Enter your Hotmail email address and click Next.

Adding a Windows Live Hotmail account to Outlook Express: Step 3 - Server Names

Make sure that "My incoming mail server is a POP3 server" is selected, and enter:

  • pop3.live.com for the Incoming mail server

  • smtp.live.com for the Outgoing mail server

Click Next.

Adding a Windows Live Hotmail account to Outlook Express: Step 4 - account login

Enter your full Hotmail email address as the Account name, and your Windows Live Hotmail password as the Password. Click Next.

Adding a Windows Live Hotmail account to Outlook Express: Step 5 - Finished, but not really

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:

Adding a Windows Live Hotmail account to Outlook Express: Step 6 - Make more changes

Click on the newly created account, and then click on the Properties button.

In the resulting Properties dialog box, click on the Advanced tab.

Adding a Windows Live Hotmail account to Outlook Express: Step 7 - Server Protocol Settings

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.

Adding a Windows Live Hotmail account to Outlook Express: Step 8 - Set Send Authentication

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.

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Article C3647 - February 11, 2009

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Recent Comments
85 Comments

For some reasons i cannot send emails anymore from thunderbird. Nothing has changed for more than a year so i really don't know what the problem is.

I've tried changing the port numbers [25, 465 & 587]and i've also disabled secure connections and avast's web mail scan.

This started about two weeks ago. Are there any changes to Microsoft's Live that i'm not aware abouts? Incoming mail is fine though. I can also send from my isp outgoing settings.

Posted by: Terry at January 25, 2010 6:42 PM

My mother uses an old MSN email account. It has been just fine for years under outlook express. Now, a few days back, it stopped sending, and gave here some bogus ~SMTP server does not support SSL~ message. Her SSL was set to port 25...I thought that was well and good...and checked and changed and reset just about everything I could think of...tearing hair out at this point. Then I found this beautiful piece of fine prose (above) that pointed me to using port 587. VIOLA!!!!!! Not sure if it was Microsoft that changed something or if Qwest (her ISP) started blocking port 25 or what, but in any case your port 587 suggestion fixed her up. Thanks! Now does anyone know where I can get a good toupe?

Posted by: Erik at January 26, 2010 9:25 PM

I followed your guidelines but when it came to get hotmail properties screen the advanced tab was not there! In the Outlook Express(3) properties it was created in 2007, I suppose that it is an old version? is there anyway out?
many thanks

Posted by: Francois at January 30, 2010 12:03 PM

i entered the settings exactly from the images but i received an error after i selected Send and Receive from Tools menu of outlook express
the message was this:
There was a problem logging onto your mail server. Your Password was rejected. Account: 'pop3.live.com', Server: 'pop3.live.com', Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR authentication failed', Port: 995, Secure(SSL): Yes, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800CCC92
There was a problem logging onto your mail server. Your Password was rejected. Account: 'pop3.live.com', Server: 'pop3.live.com', Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR authentication failed', Port: 995, Secure(SSL): Yes, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800CCC92

Why?

Posted by: Mohammad at January 31, 2010 2:38 AM

Ha HA thanks for the help sir,

it was really usefull i couldn't

conect my winodows live mail

Posted by: Francisco Puentes at January 31, 2010 12:02 PM

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