Over the past several years, Microsoft has been developing a web or “cloud” based computing strategy whose purpose is to allow users to use Microsoft products anywhere, anytime; and one of those product types is centered around e-mail and the web, and it involves using both Hotmail…
… and Windows Live Mail:
This is because Windows Live Mail, the product that comes free with the Windows Live Essentials suite of products, is actually a front end for Hotmail (or any other web based e-mail application, Yahoo, Gmail, etc.). To use it you have to sign in to your Hotmail account (or other web based account), and then you’ll be sharing the same message base.
To see this in action, note the inbox of both when logged into our test account, here’s Hotmail:
… and here’s our inbox for Windows Live Mail:
Note: When using your Windows Live account, your inbox is actually called Hotmail, but you can change it to something else under Account Properties if you wish.
Thus, you can use either product whenever you please; for example, if you compose a message in Windows Live Mail, and send it…
… and then immediately jump over to your Hotmail account, you’ll see that it shows the message you just sent.
The point here is that any messages you send or receive in Windows Live Mail when it is configured to run in conjunction with your Hotmail account, will be mirrored in your Hotmail account and vice-versa.
And the good news is that Windows Live Mail defaults to running as a Hotmail front end; to use another web based e-mail program you have to go into setup and change your settings.
Something else you can do with Windows Live Mail and Hotmail, is configure Windows Live Mail to service more than one Hotmail (or other web based) account.
Say you have two Hotmail accounts and you’d like to be able to see all of your messages in Windows Live mail from both Hotmail accounts at the same time. To do this, click on the Accounts tab on the main menu, it should look like this:
Click the Email tab and you should get this popup:
Type in the name and password for your second Hotmail account, click the Nextbutton, and you should get a message telling you that it’s working and then when it finishes you should see this:
To see both accounts in action, click the Home tab; you should see that you now have more than one inbox, along with the associated folders for each:
If you click on one of the inboxes, then start and send a new e-mail, Windows Live Mail will recognize which account you mean and send if from that account.
Note: This won’t work with Yahoo Classic accounts, you have to have Yahoo Mail Plus.
In summation, using Windows Live Mail in conjunction with Hotmail is as easy as logging into both accounts with the same Windows Live ID.