Receive mail from other e-mail accounts in Windows Live Hotmail
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This solution article describes how to set up Windows Live Hotmail to retrieve Post Office Protocol (POP) e-mail. Windows Live Hotmail supports up to four POP accounts.
You can receive, read, and respond to mail from other e-mail accounts. Some e-mail providers, such as Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, offer POP3 access and let you forward mail to another e-mail address. Contact your e-mail provider to determine whether they offer these features. If you have another e-mail account that has POP3 access, you can configure Windows Live Hotmail to receive mail from that POP3 account.
You need to have a paid subscription to be able to use this feature currently, either Windows Live Hotmail Plus or MSN Premium. However we might change this in future, stay tuned for updates!!
Latest Update - POP Aggregation feature has now been made available for all free users.
Add a Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, or other POP3 account
1. Prepare your Gmail or Yahoo! Mail account. If you have a different POP3 mail account, go to step 2
- Set up your Gmail account.
1. Sign in to your Gmail account.
2. Click Settings.
3. Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
4. In the POP Download section, select either Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded) or Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on.
5. Click Save Changes.
- Verify your Yahoo! Mail account level.
1. Sign in to your Yahoo! Mail account.
2. Verify that you have a paid Yahoo! Mail account. You can only forward your Yahoo! mail to your Windows Live Hotmail account if you have a paid Yahoo! Mail account.
2. Sign in to the Windows Live Hotmail website with your Windows Live ID.
3. On the Action bar, click Options, and then click More options.
4. Under Manage your account, click Send and receive mail from other e-mail accounts.
5. Under You can receive mail from these accounts, click Add an e-mail account.
6. Enter the e-mail address and password of the e-mail account that you want to send and receive mail from, and then click Next. Windows Live Hotmail provides the recommended settings. If you're prompted to verify the settings, or if WL Hotmail can't connect to the other mail server, you must contact your other e-mail provider to verify that the POP settings are correct. After you verify the settings, click Next.
7. Select the option for where you'd like the messages from this account sorted to, and what icon you'd like these messages to have and then click Save.
Receive mail from non-POP3 accounts
With some e-mail providers, you may be able to forward e-mail to your Windows Live Hotmail account. Not all e-mail providers support this feature. For more information about how to forward e-mail, see the Help documentation for your other e-mail provider.
Automatically delete messages from the server when they are downloaded into Hotmail
To configure Windows Live Hotmail to automatically remove messages from your other email server when Windows Live Hormail downloads them:
1. Sign in to the Windows Live Hotmail.
2. On the Action bar, click Options, and then click More options.
3. Under Manage your account, click Send and receive mail from other e-mail accounts.
4. Next to the account you'd like to change settings for, click Edit.
5. Uncheck the box next to "Leave a copy of my messages on the server"
6. Click 'Next'
7. Click Save.
Things to Note:
# Windows Live Hotmail users can add up to four POP3 accounts.
# The maximum size of an e-mail message that you can download is 15 MB. Messages that are larger than 15 MB won't be downloaded.
# You can download 50 messages at a time. If you have to download more than 50 messages, you must download 50 of them at a time.
# Windows Live Hotmail will automatically check and download messages from your other email accounts.
If you are having problems retrieving your POP mails even after following these steps, please write a post here.
