Microsoft has recently been promoting upcoming updates to their Hotmail service, promising to make it an even better webmail service. But Microsoft’s revamped Outlook 2010 is already here. Here’s how to integrate Hotmail with Outlook.

Outlook 2010 works with a wide variety of email accounts, including POP3, IMAP, and Exchange accounts.  The only problem with POP3 and IMAP accounts is that they only sync email, but not your calendar and contacts like Exchange does.  Hotmail, however, lets you sync your email, contacts, and calendar with Outlook with the Hotmail Connector.  This lets you keep all of your PIM data accessible from everywhere.  Let’s look at how we can set this up on our account.

Getting Started

The easiest way to add Hotmail to Outlook is to first install the Outlook Hotmail Connector (link below).  Make sure Outlook is closed first, and then proceed with the installation as usual.

If you enter your Hotmail account into the New Account setup in Outlook before installing the Hotmail Connector, Outlook will prompt you to download the Hotmail Connector.  However, you’ll have to exit Outlook before you can install the Connector, and then will have to re-enter your information when you restart Outlook, so it’s easier to just install it first.

Add Your Hotmail Account to Outlook

Now you’re ready to add your Hotmail account to Outlook.  If this is the first time you’ve run Outlook 2010, you’ll be greeted with the following screen.  Click Next to proceed with setup.

Then select Yes and click Next again.

If you’ve already got an email account setup in Outlook, you can add a new account by clicking File and then selecting Add account.

Now, enter your Hotmail account information, and click Next.

Outlook will search for your account settings and automatically setup your account with the Hotmail connector we previously installed.

If you entered your password incorrectly previously, you may see the following popup.  Re-enter your password and click OK, and Outlook will re-verify your settings.

Once everything’s finished and setup, you’ll see the following completion screen.  Click Finish to complete the setup and check out your Hotmail in Outlook.

Welcome to your Hotmail account in Outlook 2010.  You’ll notice a small notification at the bottom of the window notifying you that you’re connected to Windows Live Hotmail.  Now your email will synchronize with your Hotmail account, and your Outlook calendar and contacts will be synced with your Live calendar and contacts, respectively.  This is the closest you can get to full Exchange without an Exchange account, and in our experience it works great.  In fact, Hotmail Sync seems to work faster than IMAP sync for us.

Setup Hotmail With POP3 Access

If you need to access your Hotmail email account but don’t want to install the Outlook Connector, then you can add it with POP3 sync.  We recommend going with the Outlook Connector for the best experience, but if you can’t install it (eg. you’re not allowed to install applications on your work PC) then this is a good alternative.

To do this, follow our tutorial on setting up a Gmail POP3 account in Outlook. Although the article concentrates on Gmail, the settings are essentially the same. The only thing you’ll want to change is the Incoming and Outgoing mail server.

• Incoming mail server – pop3.live.com
• Outgoing mail server – smtp.live.com
• User name – your Hotmail or Live email address
• Incoming Server (POP3) – 995
• Outgoing Server (SMTP) – 587
• Also, check This server requires and encrypted connection

Just as in the Gmail example, select TLS for the type of encrypted connection.  Then, on the bottom, make sure to uncheck the box to Remove messages from the server after a number of days.  This way your messages will still be accessible from your Hotmail account online.

Conclusion

Even though Hotmail is generally not as popular as Gmail, it works great with Outlook integration.  If you’re a heavy user of Windows Live services, or want to try them out, Outlook Connector is the easiest way to keep your desktop activity synced with the cloud.  If you’re just one of the millions of Hotmail users who want to access their old Hotmail account alongside their other accounts, this method works great for you too.

If you’re using Outlook 2003 or 2007, check out our article on using Hotmail from Microsoft Outlook.

Links

Download Outlook Hotmail Connector 32-bit

Download Outlook Hotmail Connector 64-bit – note, only for users of Office 2010 x64