A new post by Microsoft employee Dharmesh Mehta on the Inside Windows Live blog highlights core reasons why users might want to switch from Gmail to Hotmail, before explaining the actual steps that migrates their email account to the Hotmail email service.

• Hotmail & Facebook work well together. You can update your Facebook status, chat with Facebook friends, view their updates, and comment right from your Hotmail inbox. You can’t do this from Gmail.
• You can easily share lots of photos and large attachments. Hotmail lets you share hundreds of photos or other files in one message using the integrated online storage from SkyDrive. You can’t do this in Gmail.
• Hotmail works great with Office. Using the Office Web Apps, Hotmail lets you view and edit Office docs for free right in your inbox. Gmail doesn’t work well with Office.
• Hotmail lets you get a handle on graymail. With customizable categories and scheduled sweeps, you can quickly clean up things like newsletters, social updates, and daily deals so you only see the mail that really matters to you. Gmail doesn’t have Sweep.

These features alone won’t convince many users to move their email account to Hotmail. Combined with Google’s announcement however they could be enough to get some users to move their accounts.

It needs to be noted though that Gmail offers features that Hotmail does not offer. This includes IMAP support or two step authentication, both of which are not supported by Hotmail.

The guide to switch from Gmail to Hotmail lists three steps.

• Create a Hotmail account. If you don’t already have one, you need to create a Hotmail account. The best way to do this is to get a new email address either @hotmail.com or @live.com. Or, if you already have an email address you want to keep using, you can keep using it and sign up here. You don’t have to use our domain.
• Import your old messages from Gmail. You’ll probably want to keep your old email and contacts so we’ve made it simple to bring them in. TrueSwitch is an easy tool which will import your email and contacts and forward any new email to Hotmail for 90 days. Go to the TrueSwitch site and follow the steps there. When you sign back in to Hotmail, you’ll notice that it’s beginning to import your emails (this could take a few hours if you have a lot of emails to bring over).
• Connect your Gmail account. This step is optional, but if you want to make sure you receive future messages from Gmail, you can have Hotmail automatically get all new emails that are sent to your old Gmail account. These are the steps to connect your accounts:
  a. In your inbox, click Options and then More options.

  b. Click Sending/receiving email from other accounts.

  c. Click Add an email account.

  d. Provide your Gmail account details.

Step 2 and 3 address core issues that users who move mail accounts want resolved before they even start thinking about it. Access to all previous mail messages and the forwarding of messages that are send to the old account are covered in those two steps.

Are you considering moving your Gmail account to another provider?

Yesterday I started to look into the issue more closely to figure out if there was an option to create a new Hotmail email address from within an existing account. It took some digging through Hotmail’s page layout to find the page where new email addresses can be added.

Open the Hotmail main page and sign into your Hotmail account if you are not already signed in. You should now see the inbox and the frontpage of the account.

Locate the Options link in the top right corner and select the more options link from the context menu. This opens the main account control panel where you can configure the majority of account related settings. Click on account details under managing your account. Hotmail may ask you to enter your account password again before the next page is displayed.

Click on the your email addresses link under other options. This opens a page listing all linked email addresses and aliases. A click on add an email address allows you to create a new Hotmail or Windows Live account, or to link a third party account to the Hotmail account.

Just enter a new account name and select whether you would like it to be a hotmail.com or live.com account.

The address is automatically added to the account and you can start using the account right away.

You can alternatively open the following link to create new Hotmail email addresses right away. This opens the mail overview page right away where you can add or remove email accounts.

Unlike spam, graymail cannot be filtered out that easily, as it is way more versatile. Even more problematic, while email account owners may not want to see most of the graymail on a daily basis, they may want to see some.

Considering that newsletters make up the biggest part of the average user’s mail delivery, Microsoft decided to tackle the problem from that angle.

The Hotmail team started to create a new newsletter filter that would allow users to filter newsletters automatically. When you now open Hotmail, you see the new newsletters filter displayed in the top filtering row. A social updates, contacts and groups filter is available as well.

A click on newsletters displays only mail that Hotmail’s SmartScreen filter has classified as such. According to Microosft, about 97% of all newsletters get identified correctly by the machine. Hotmail users can change email classifications, which may be helpful when emails get classified as newsletters when they are not, or when newsletters do not get recognized as such. These user actions help to improve the filtering further.

The main question is this: How helpful is the new newsletter filter? Newsletters are still displayed in the inbox which means that they will crowd your inbox as they did before. The only real advantage that I see is that you now have faster access to newsletters. This can be helpful in determining which newsletters to keep and which to unsubscribe to. An automatic option to hide newsletters from appearing in the inbox does not seem to be available at this point in time. You can still configure email filters though to move newsletters to a new folder automatically, but that option was available before the update as well.

New email accounts can be created on the official Hotmail website. Please note that you can use an existing Windows Live account to sign in as well.

Schedule Cleanup

The new cleanup option is configured individually for each sender. It basically allows you to delete messages from that particular sender automatically. This can be handy for “daily-offer” emails, logs, notifications or any other kind of messages that are only relevant for a specific amount of time. You can alternatively configure the messages to be moved to another folder instead.

To configure cleanups select a message from the inbox, and then Sweep > Schedule Cleanup.

This displays an overlay menu with the following configuration options:

• Only keep the latest message from this sender
• Delete all messages older than 10 days (alternatively 3, 30 or 60 days)
• Move all messages older than 10 days (3, 30 or 60) to a specific folder.

One-click unsubscribe

This is a similar to Gmail’s unsubscribe from newsletter and notification option. Hotmail notifies the sender that the user wants to unsubscribe, and will furthermore configure filters to move existing and future messages into the junk.

Flag Important Messages

It is now easier to flag important message to locate them faster in the future. The new “Keep this message at the top of your inbox” option makes sure that important messages stay on top of the box and are not moved down with the rest of the messages.

The Hotmail team has created a short video demonstrating the new flag capabilities.

Photo Album, Attachment Improvements

Users who send photos regularly now see the photos in Hotmail when they are composing the email. That’s useful considering that you’d only see file names before.

Large attachments can now also be send using SkyDrive which resolves possible attachment size limitations. Instead of compressing emails or splitting them up to stay below the limit, it is now possible to store the files on SkyDrive instead.

The new forgotten attachment detector makes sure that you have not forgotten to attach files to the email. This is based on popular words and phrases that indicate attachments.

Instant Actions

Instant actions are one-click actions. Flag to stick mails at the top is for instance an instant action. Hotmail users can configure actions in detail. This is done under Options > More Options > Customizing Hotmail > Instant Actions.

Actions can be configured to always show or only show on mouse over. Flag is the only action that is always shown by default, while delete and mark read/unread are only shown on hoover.

Additional actions are moving and categorizing messages, sweep and junk. The order can be configured as well.

Folder Management

Hotmail users can now create and manage folders more easily with a right-click on the folder. Messages can now also be moved directly to folders that are displayed under Folders.

Hotmail for Android

Android users can now download and install the official Hotmail Android app. The app features email, calendar and contact synchronization.

It supports multiple Hotmail accounts on the same device and displays new mail notifications on the Home screen.

Of all the features, the option to stick emails on top of a folder is the one that I like the most.

What’s your take on the new set of features? (via)

That’s what Hotmail has added to their website recently. When you open the Windows Live Hotmail website you see the standard Hotmail sign in screen for the most part. If you look below the Sign In button you see this:

Not your computer? Get a single use code to sign in with

The sign in form changes when you click on the link. You are now asked to enter your Windows Live ID and the single use code instead of your regular password to log in to the service.

This is also indicated at the top where it states:

sign in with single use code. If you’re signing in from a public computer, you can use a single use code instead of your password for added security.

If you do not have a code yet you can request one with a click on Get one here on the same page. You are then asked to enter your Windows Live ID and a mobile phone number that is linked to the account. Microsoft will send a text message to the phone number containing the single use code that you can use to sign in to Hotmail.

If you have not linked a mobile phone number to your Windows Live account yet you can do so in the account settings. Open the link and enter your standard login information. Click on the Manage link next to Security Info on the page and then on Add New below Mobile Phone on the next page.

The mobile phone number needs to be confirmed before it can be used for single use codes. Hotmail sends an email to the linked account email address. This email contains a confirmation link that you need to load to confirm the addition of the mobile phone number to the account. This obviously only adds to security if you do not use Hotmail as your email provider for that account email address.

Once the number has been verified you can start requesting single use codes for your Hotmail sign ins.

Single use codes are actually available on all Windows Live sign in forms.

The addition of single use codes adds to Hotmail’s and Windows Live’s security big time. What’s your take on this? (via)

The good news is that it’s actually possible to migrate all your email, contacts and calendar between multiple email providers using a service provided by TrueSwitch.  What’s more, if you’re switching to Gmail, Hotmail or one of the other ‘partner’ providers for the company the service is completely free.

To use it all you need to do is enter your usernames and passwords for the two relevant accounts and wait up to 24 hours for the system to transfer everything from your old account to your new one.  What’s more, because it merely copies the email, calendar and contacts, you can also use it to completely back up an email account!

When you go to the main website, which isn’t the most usable one I’ve ever encountered, if you are switching your email to one of the providers listed on the right side of the page, listed under the “Free when you switch to our partners” link, just click the icon relevant to the email provider you are switching to.  You will then be taken to the relevant form on their website where you enter the details of the two accounts, and tell TrueSwitch what data it is that you want to transfer.

Additionally you can then set the service to continue forwarding email from your old account to your new one for up to 60 days.  This is extremely useful if you’re moving your whole account from one company to another.

But what do you then do if your old email is sitting in an Outlook PST file or Outlook Express.  Well with the latter you’ll first need to import your email into Outlook.  Then you need to make sure you have the latest version of the Outlook Connector software installed if you’re using Hotmail, or that you set up your Gmail or other account with Outlook using IMAP.

Do you know that when you’re in Outlook and looking at your email folder tree, you can simply drag and drop email from an Outlook PST file into your Hotmail connector folder, or an IMAP folder.  The emails will be moved from the PST file into the connector file and the next time you synchronise your email they will all be uploaded to the cloud to become part of your Hotmail or Gmail account.

It really couldn’t be simpler to get all of your email, from any ISP and no matter how old, into a single email service.  I’ve used it to aggregate email from two separate ISPs that I downloaded since 2001 into Outlook using a POP server, and my old now defunct Gmail account into my current Hotmail account.

I then used the TrueSwitch service to back up that entire Hotmail account, now the repository of all of my sent and received email from multiple services since 2001, into my Gmail account.  I’ve done this because the recent Hotmail outage earlier this year that deleted some people’s emails for good, including some of mine, made me a bit jumpy.

There have been other services and software packages over the years that have also been able to migrate your email, calendar and contacts between providers, but none that I’ve found are quite as powerful or as flexible.

In order to make the system more secure you had to type your complete email address whenever you entered the services.  This caused a flood of complaints to the company from people who didn’t want to have to type sometimes long and difficult email addresses whenever they wanted to log in.

Now Microsoft have come back with a response, first explaining why they made the change they did and also detailing how they’ve addressed the criticisms from users.

Over the past several years, we’ve received a lot of negative feedback on the old user tile login experience, from bugs to design flaws to the fact that it only worked only in IE.  For the recent change to “keep me signed in,” our goal was to simplify the options, ensure consistent behavior across browsers and platforms, and make it faster and easier for you to get straight into your inbox.

While the majority of people seem quite pleased with the change, we’ve heard via the Inside Windows Live blog and other places that some of you liked the user tiles and the “remember me” option and feel that something you loved has been taken away.

The change they’ve made is small but very significant, and if you want a more secure experience can be disabled by switching off the autocomplete function in your web browser.

The change we’ve made is to add an attribute to the email address input box on our login page. What this means is that if your browser has autocomplete enabled, the form will automatically fill previously entered email addresses for you as you type, or you can hit the down arrow on your keyboard to see the full list and select the account you want.

This new change means that the email address box will now remember past entries and bring up appropriate email addresses when you type the first, or the first few letters.  This is probably the behaviour that it should have and it will be welcomed by many.

The changes are being rolled out now, so don’t expect everything to change overnight as it can take some time to update every server hosting the service when you’re dealing with something this large that’s used by hundreds of millions of people.

It’s just a small change but one that will leave many wondering why Microsoft didn’t do this to begin with.  The most obvious reason for making the change they did last month was to improve security for the service.  The change would have made no difference for people trying to hack into your email account from outside of your home or work space, but certainly made mobile devices such as tablets and laptops much more secure.

Microsoft’s Live services had proved more resilient in recent years to those of rival Gmail, which has been repeatedly hacked by the Chinese government.  This is despite Microsoft being a much larger target for attack than any of their rivals, who are generally more popular.

It’s good to see the Microsoft are taking security seriously, especially when your Live ID no longer just gets you access to your email and calendar, but also to sensitive documents stored in Skydrive and your Office 325 account too.  On this occasion they went to far in trying to protect their users, and it’s great to see that they’ve rectified the situation.

On a nicer note, it may be useful to know the location of a prospective client for business purposes so you may prepare a proposal significant to their demographic. This can be a benign and useful process as well as one to defend. The process is the same. You choose what to do with it. This gets technical, so prepare for some work.

Here is how to take the steps for Google, Outlook, and Yahoo.

Gmail

Log in to your Gmail account. Open the e-mail that for which you are seeking the origin.

Click the down arrow to the right of the reply ink and choose “Show original”.

Now this moves on to the technical part. Seek out the text lines that start with “Received From.” You can press Ctrl+F to search the phrase automatically. Note that there are many paths that the e-mail is received from. The true original location will be found furthest to the bottom of the text. It is advantageous to see all IP addresses involved. Here we find the original IP address and host name of the sender. Make sure you always select the last Received From entry in the listing.

Yahoo Mail

Open the email that you want to analyze. Scroll all the way down to the bottom until you see the toolbar at the bottom. Locate the Actions menu and click on it.

Select View Full Header to see all email header information.

Hotmail

Sign in to Hotmail and open the email. Locate the down arrow on the right side next to the Reply link. Click on the arrow and select View message source.

Locating the IP

The next step is to find the location of the IP address.

This is done by using a simple location lookup on the IP address. There are online programs that you can locate IP address information through, such as What Is My IP Address and these give broad map of the territory in which the IP address is located.

There are plenty of online services that allow you to look up IP address locations. When it comes to finding IP address locations for security purposes, it is important to find a reliable service. There are other services available. It is suggested that you use one, either free or with premium features at a small cost. This will make the discovery of the IP address location easy and minimize expenditure of time. It is a broad subject to go into when it comes to doing the search yourself. For practical purposes, third-party finders are affordable and accurate. Know where your e-mails are coming from. Mysteries mean risks. Otherwise, use the Ctrl+F option.

Hotmail today has announced that the company has started to block common passwords to prevent users from using them. This provides better protection against brute force attacks. Dick Craddock, Hotmail group product manager notes that common passwords are not just password or 123456”, but also words or phrases like ilovecats or gogiants.

The feature will be rolling out soon. It will not affect users who use a weak password, at least not for now, but Microsoft hints at the possibility that this might change in the future. For now, only users who register a new Hotmail account or change their password are benefiting from the new ruling.

Microsoft furthermore suggests to add alternate account ownership “proofs” to the Hotmail account, like a secondary email address, question and secret answer or a mobile phone number to aid in the recovery of accounts.

The second security related change is the new “my friend’s been hacked!” feature which is available under the Mark As menu on Hotmail.

Friends are supposed to use the new reporting option when they know that their friend’s account has been hacked. This is for instance the case when they receive spam emails from the friend’s email address or when the friends notifies them about it.

Selecting the option gives Hotmail’s compromise detection engine another factor or signal to identify a user account as hijacked, compromised or hacked.

When the detection engine comes to that conclusion it blocks account access so that it cannot be longer accessed by the spammer. It furthermore opens up account recovery options for the account owner. It is likely that the attacker’s IP gets blocked in the process to prevent access to those recovery options.

Even better, Hotmail will report compromised email accounts to Yahoo Mail and Google Mail as well, so that these providers can use the information on their system.

Hotmail introduced the feature a few weeks ago to selected accounts.

Two security features, one to improve overall account security, the other to reduce the damage caused by hacked accounts. More information about Hotmail’s new Security features are available at the official Windows Team Blog.

The latest Update for the Outlook Connector (version 14.0.6106.5001) is being widely complained about online for constantly causing folder synchronisation errors.  Users of the software are getting the message…

Task ‘-@-.com’ reported error (0×80004005) : ‘Network operation failed’
Task ‘-@-.com’ reported error (0x8004102A) : ‘Error with Send/Receive. There was an error synchronizing your folder hierarchy.The network connection is unavailable or interrupted. Please try again later.’
Task ‘-@-.com’ reported error (0x8004103A) : ‘Synchronization error.’

The official Microsoft Answers support website has a thread about the problem that people are subscribing to in ever greater numbers as the weekend goes on. Many people are reporting that the problem is affecting their calendar, and that there’s no way to fix it.

If you have this problem already then, alas, it looks as if you’ll have to wait for Microsoft to provide a fix.  If you have upgraded your Outlook Connector recently however, rolling back your system using System Restore, might rectify the problem.  For new installations of Outlook however it’s not good news as the system will not allow you to set up a Hotmail or other account unless you are using the very latest version of the connector software.

People who have been hit by this problem have tried everything from completely uninstalling both the Connector and Office, deleting the store folders for both and cleaning out the registry.  They’ve done this though only to find when they reinstall everything the problem still remains.

Microsoft have not yet made any comment about the problem, but ought to be aware of it by now because it’s causing people such significant inconvenience.  Until the problem is resolved my personal recommendation would be to switch temporarily to Windows Live Mail which still syncs with your Hotmail or Gmail account without any problems.

The latest version of the connector was released on the 7th July and should be avoided if you see it in Windows Update.  You should right-click on this update and select “Hide” from the context menu that appears.  With this update hidden Outlook should continue to work for you as normal.  When a replacement update for the connector software is released by Microsoft this should then appear as normal in Windows Update so that you can install it.

It’s not very often that Microsoft release a product update that breaks the product, though as they go this one can be seen in two ways.  Outlook will continue to work, though it will report errors, and if you’re happy to keep your calendar temporarily updated in your web browser then you should be fine.  However, it is very inconvenient for many people and the number joining the complaint thread on the Microsoft support website is growing constantly.  Clearly people are annoyed and these are just the people who know how and where to look for product support online.

There will be a great many more users of the Outlook and Outlook Connector software that will not know where to get help and will currently be thinking there is something wrong with their computer.  This could cost some people money if they ask for an expert to look at it for them.  Clearly then Microsoft need to fix this problem as a matter of priority.

If you are experiencing this problem, the main thread for information on the Microsoft Answers website can be found here.

UPDATED : The problem has now been confirmed to have also affected the x64 version of the latest Outlook Connector update.

Microsoft recently changed the Windows Live sign-in without prior notification. You may recall that the service displayed multiple user tiles if users had signed in with multiple user accounts before. It also offered options to remember the user (remember me) and to remember the password.

The new Windows Live Sign-In has been changed, and those options have been removed. Users who access the login page will notice that Microsoft has removed the user tile per saved account option and combined remember me and remember my password into a keep me signed in option.

Microsoft has been criticized by users for removing previously available options. Remember Me basically has been removed completely. It was convenient for users who did not want to save email and password, but only their email address so that they did not have to re-enter it every time they sign in to a Windows Live service.

Remember Me was also responsible for the user account tiles on the sign in pages.

Why have the two features been removed by Microsoft? There have been three core reasons for that, according to a post by Eric Doerr on the Inside Windows Live blog:

Customer confusion: We got consistent reports from customers who were confused by the design. Not understanding which checkbox did what and as a result accidentally leaving account tiles at an internet cafe or a friend’s house were common complaints. Depending on your settings, sometimes you were signed in but still had to click the tile, sign-out didn’t always work as expected, sometimes you had to enter a password and sometimes not – it seemed random and confusing. To make matters worse, tiles only worked on Internet Explorer; other browsers always had the simpler experience.

Some customers were confused by the two checkboxes and the tiles, that’s what the statement above basically says. Microsoft is however not addressing the underlying problem. Users should not use remember me, remember my password or the new keep me signed in on public computers, ever. Those that do have a different problem than just leaving their account accidentally logged in on public computer systems. The new setting does not change this at all. The only thing that is not longer displayed is the user account tiles during sign-in, but it still can happen that users stay logged in on a public computer.

Changing trends in device ownership: As more people bought laptops and smartphones (which tend to be used by just one person), we heard more feedback that the tiles just got in the way, and what people really wanted to do was to just get to the service without interruption. We knew from our telemetry that fewer than 2% of users were using the tiles, but 100% of our users were interrupted by them in the old design.

A change again because of some users who could not figure out how to remove tiles from the sign in pages. While I have never worked with tiles, I’d guess that each was linked to a cookie on the system. Clearing the cookies would therefor remove the tiles from the system. Again more of a issue for users who do not know how to do basic stuff like that.

Consolidation on a primary account: Increasingly, customers are consolidating their Windows Live usage into one primary account. It used to be common for one person to have multiple accounts. As we’ve integrated Windows Live ID across other products like Xbox, Windows Phone, SkyDrive, and Office –the core account has become more valuable, and it’s become less necessary to switch between accounts.

While that addresses one issue that some users may have, it neglects the fact that many households are using a single computer system and single user account on that system for their Internet. And suggesting that those households and communities should create separate user accounts for each user may be sound, but it neglects the fact that many computer users do not know how that is done.

User comments have been mostly negatively, including:

Captain Sky

As others have said, by removing the ability to only save your email address and not your password you have made things less safe. Very strange change in my mind (and many other I have talked to about this).

Zwanzer

You say that working with aliases is the solution to that and I tried to figure it out.

It is COMPLICATED and I can’t get it to work when I login.

I cannot understand why you replaced something very easy and user-friendly with something that is so complicated.

Cindyjay

My friends and I all have families who share the home PC. Being able to sit down and simply select which account one wanted to use was perfect. If security was ever an issue, one simply would not choose to have password remembered.

Integrate email accounts? Not if we’re talking about mom, dad, brother, sister, grandma and whoever all sharing the same computer……. all with their own Hotmail accounts.

The suggested solution (to create multiple user accounts for windows on 1 computer) is in my situation inconvenient because of the normal startup (which normally brings me to the desktop) is now interrupted with a login. And I should do so specially because of Hotmail???

Jumbo Frosty

Customer Confusion? If customers were confused between the difference between “Remember me” and “Remember my password”, why not just change the labels to something less confusing, like “Remember my User ID” and “Remember my User ID and Password”.

Changing trends in Device Ownership and Consolidation on Primary Account explain why you would want to add the “Keep me signed in” feature, but doesn’t explain why you would get rid of the old features. For people who are sole users of their computer, it is great to give them the speed and convenience of remaining signed in without having to retype their user ID and password.

But why take away a feature which is beneficial for people who share a computer (such as a family computer) or for security reasons don’t want to remain signed in (like accessing Hotmail from a work computer, and don’t want to worry about logging out before someone from their company helpdesk accesses their computer).

Even the work-around suggestion of creating different Windows logins is absurd. With the old Hotmail feature, I could be creating a PowerPoint presentation on a shared family computer. If my wife wanted to check her email, she could just interrupt me, and with a few mouse clicks view her Hotmail email, and let me get back to PowerPoint. Instead, you are suggesting that I close my PowerPoint presentation, log out completely, and then she log in, check her email, and then log out, then I log back in, and then reopen my PowerPoint presentation. Hardly simpler, faster, or less confusing.

Well the list goes on and one. Have you noticed the changes on the Windows Live Sign-In pages? If so, what is your opinion?

The figure may not look as impressive as it could be considering the hundred of millions of Hotmail users. Then again, users had to opt in to enable SSL. Another reason was that Microsoft’s desktop email programs, Windows Live Mail and Microsoft Outlook, did not support Hotmail SSL. What that meant is that users had to make a decision. Either enable SSL in Hotmail and break compatibility with the desktop email software, or leave the SSL setting disabled to keep using the desktop email programs.

Microsoft updated SSL protection for Hotmail and other Windows Live services yesterday to give desktop email users the same level of protection than online users.

Windows Live Mail has been updated so that all traffic is now using SSL. Even better; The feature becomes available immediately after updating Windows Live Mail to the latest version. This can be done manually via the Windows Live website or automatically via Windows Update.

Outlook Connector has been updated as well so that Outlook users who have configured a Hotmail account in Outlook can use SSL as well. This is again enabled automatically without user interaction.

Microsoft has furthermore enabled SSL on a number of Windows Live websites for PC and smartphone connections. The announcement mentions hotmail.com and live.com.

Lack of SSL support was one of the most requested Windows Live Mail and Outlook features. It is good for all Windows Live users that Microsoft has added SSL support for their external desktop clients, especially so since SSL is enabled by default in the new versions. (via)

One of the biggest changes in this new version of Hotmail are additional mouse and keyboard shortcuts. A new menu has been created that appears when a user right-clicks on a message in the inbox. The menu offers a direct link to reply, reply all or forward the selected message. This is in addition to previously supported right-click actions such as delete, move or mark as junk.

Users who like to use keyboard shortcuts whenever possible have now access to a whole new set of shortcuts, taken directly from Microsoft’s desktop messaging client Outlook, as well as the online email services Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

Users of Outlook, and those who switched from Gmail or Yahoo Mail to Hotmail can now use keyboard shortcuts that they are already familiar with. Popular ones include:

Outlook

Gmail, Yahoo Mail

• Delete a message – # – Delete
• Create a new message – C – N
• Send a message – None – Alt+S
• Open a message – O – None
• Print a message – None – P
• Reply to a message – R – R
• Reply all to a message – A – A
• Forward a message – F – F
• Save a draft message – Ctrl+S – Ctrl+S
• Mark a message as junk – ! – None
• Mark a message as read – Shift+I – K
• Mark a message as unread – Shift+U – Shift+K
• Move to a folder – None – D
• Open the next message – J – Ctrl+.
• Open the previous message – K – Ctrl+,
• Close a message – U – Esc
• Search your email messages – / – S
• Select all – * then A
• Deselect all – * then N
• Go to the inbox – G then I – M
• Go to your Drafts folder – G then D
• Go to your Sent folder – G then T

All keyboard shortcuts work at the same time, which means that you can either press the delete key or # to delete a message, or Ctrl-n, c or n to create a new message.

You find all supported keyboard shortcuts here.

Hotmail users can now customize their email messages by setting a default font and personal signature for all email messages. Here is a video that demonstrates the new features.

What’s your take on the new Hotmail features? I really like the new keyboard shortcuts as they tend to speed things up considerably.

While many Ghacks readers may know to follow these steps, having a guide handy for others is a useful thing. I can imagine many readers are resources for friends, family, and coworkers. These steps can serve as a checklist to ensure thoroughness.

This is a guide on how to reasonably secure your e-mail account. What to do if you lose access to your account is a different problem for another article. This article assumes you still have access, but strange things (as mentioned) are going on. It will cover the three most commonly used e-mail account types: Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail. While changing the settings is pretty easy, finding them can be less than obvious. Here are some screenshots to help you find the general settings page for your account.

Step 1 : Change Your Password

You need to do this immediately. This is akin to changing the locks on your doors. When you do not know exactly who has a key to your home, the locks are a liability. Count yourself lucky that you can get into your account. To change your password, log-in and go to Settings. Then follow the steps appropriate to your account.

• In Gmail: Mail Settings > Accounts and Imports > Change Password
• In Hotmail: More Options > Account Details (look for “Change” next to password)
• In Yahoo Mail: Mail Options > Account Information > Change your password

Step 2 : Check Your Recovery E-mail Address

Your recovery e-mail address is the one that you use to reset/regain your password. However, if it was changed, it can be used to get the password to your account. Take a look to see if it is set to another account you own. If not, change it immediately. You also may want to follow these steps on that account.

• In Gmail: Mail Settings > Accounts and Imports > Change Password Recovery Options
• In Hotmail: More Options > Account Details (look for “Remove” next to an odd e-mail)
• In Yahoo Mail: Mail Options > Account Information > Update password-reset info

Step 3 : Change Your Hints

Most people forget about this, but it is a good idea to change your hints. If the hacker knows the answer, they may be able to regain access. This usually requires the recovery e-mail address to be altered, but it is still better to change your hints. Since hints are usually used to reset passwords, they can be used to change your password.

• In Gmail: Mail Settings > Accounts and Imports > Change Password Recovery Options
• In Hotmail: More Options > Account Details (look for remove next to a question)
• In Yahoo Mail: Mail Options > Account Information > Update password-reset info

Step 4 : Check Your Forwards

Checking your forwards is going to be a tedious process, but it is important. If you only have time to skim them over, then do so but make a thorough look your next priority. Your bank account may depend on it. Your e-mail account can be set up to send letters to other e-mail accounts. Most websites are set up to send new passwords to your e-mail address. That means that an unscrupulous person could ask the site for your password, set up your account to forward it to an account they have access to, and the get into the site. That could be a bank site, a blog, FaceBook, or anything else.

• In Gmail: Mail Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP
• In Hotmail: More Options > Email forwarding
• In Yahoo Mail: Mail Options > POP & Forwarding (note: a premium service)

Step 5 : Change All Your Passwords on Connected Accounts

Sadly, you have to assume that your forwards are compromised. You are going to have to go through each site you used your e-mail account to sign up with and change the password and hint. You might even want to associate them with a separate account to isolate critical e-mails. Alternatively, you could just change your password and hint on sensitive sites. Your bank and any financial websites should be first. Social networking site like FaceBook and Twitter should be next.

Keep in Mind

You should always use a strong password for your accounts: one with uppercase, lowercase, numeric, and symbol characters. Ideally, you should have a different one for each account. At the very least your e-mail, financial, and social networking sites should have separate passwords. Security is not about absolutes, but about making it difficult for others to gain access to you account.

It is worth noting that each of these services has an extra security feature. You can actually set up your account to use your phone for e-mail recovery. As I have not used it, it is beyond the scope of this article, but is worth considering.

Addendum

If you have troubles logging in at all, you may want to take a look at the following guides to resolve the problem:

• Hotmail Sign In Help
• Yahoo Mail Signin, Login Help (Yahoomail)
• MSN Hotmail Sign In Troubleshooting
• Google Sign In Help, Troubleshooting
• Gmail Login

The guides aid you in password, username and account recovery.

Those icons until now have been static. If you pin Outlook to the taskbar you see the Outlook icon and that’s it. While that has not changed for applications yet, a first step was made today that demonstrates the capabilities of the taskbar.

Internet Explore 9 users on Windows 7 who pin the email service Hotmail to the taskbar see a new message count directly on the taskbar’s icon. No need to open Hotmail anymore to check for new messages, a single glance at the taskbar icon is enough to see if you have got new emails, or not.

You still need to be logged into Hotmail to make use of the new feature, which essentially means that Internet Explorer 9 needs to be open as well. This is probably the biggest drawback for users who do not use Microsoft’s latest web browser as their default browser. IE9 users on the other hand who use a Hotmail account will likely make good use of the feature.

To pin the hotmail website to the taskbar you can either drag and drop the Hotmail tab to it, or the Hotmail favicon that is displayed in front of the website address. The unread message count appears automatically whenever you are logged into Hotmail in Internet Explorer 9. The count is updated automatically when you read emails, when new emails arrive or you perform other actions that have an effect on the number of unread messages.

It would be great if Microsoft, and other desktop email developers, could integrate a similar feature for desktop email clients such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird. Does anyone know if that is a possibility?

A right-click on the Hotmail icon displays links to tasks such as the Inbox, Calendar, Contacts or the send email form. Users who have pinned Hotmail to the taskbar before need to unpin and re-pin the website to get the new feature.

It is also not clear at this point in time if the feature is available for all Hotmail users and email accounts. I for instance could not get it to work with a third-party email address configured in Hotmail.

A minority of Gmail users recently noticed that all of their emails were missing. Their inbox showed zero emails, and while Google was able to correct the issue later on, it was a shock for them and demonstrated that individual backup strategies are a must for cloud-based storage solutions. Users need to make sure that they have access to their emails, even if they become inaccessible online.

What can you do to protect your emails so that you won’t be losing the data in similar situations? The emails need to be backed up regularly, of course. This may sound cumbersome and complicated, and that may be true for the setting up part, but once that’s done it is not complicated or time consuming at all.

Most email providers offer Pop3 or IMAP access next to web access. These protocols are used by desktop software and mobile applications to retrieve emails from the provider. Most applications can be used for backup purposes, but they lack advanced features that may be needed. We are going to show you how to utilize the free email backup software MailStore Home for the purpose of backing up email accounts that support the POP3 or IMAP protocol.

The program can backup POP3 and IMAP mailboxes, as well as email inboxes from popular desktop clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Exchange or Thunderbird. Support for Google Mail has been integrated directly which eliminates several configuration steps when configuring a Google Mail account, more about that later.

MailStore Home displays all email archiving options on startup.

Backup Gmail Emails

Gmail users have the easiest configuration ahead of them. All they need to do is to click on Google Mail and enter their Gmail email address and password. They do however need to make sure that IMAP is enabled in Gmail. This can be done under Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > Enable IMAP > Save changes.

MailStore Home will backup all Gmail emails to the local computer system. The emails can be read, searched and restored whenever the need arises. More about the program’s functionality later on in the guide.

Hotmail Backup

Hotmail users need to select POP3 Mailbox from the available choices. The required Hotmail Pop3 information are the following:

• Email address: The hotmail email address that needs to be backed up.
• Host: pop3.live.com
• Access-via: Select POP3-SSL
• Username: The hotmail username, usually the email address
• Password: The password of the email account

A click on Next displays the archiving options. Here it is possible to select whether the emails of the account should be deleted after backup or left untouched. The default setting is to keep all email messages. It is possible to delete all emails after archiving, x days after archiving or to delete emails that are older than a specified time period.

MailStore Home establishes a connection to the selected email host after the initial configuration has been completed. The connection and backup process is displayed in a log.

Backup Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail does not support Pop3, only Yahoo Mail Plus users can enable that feature. Yahoo Mail Plus users need to enable POP3 access under Options > Mail Options > Pop & Forwarding.

• Email address: The Yahoo email address that needs to be backed up.
• Host: pop.mail.yahoo.com
• Access-via: Select POP3-SSL
• Username: The Yahoomail username, usually the email address
• Password: The password of the email account

The tricks that worked in the past to add POP3 access to Yahoo Mail standard accounts do not seem to work anymore. Programs like YPOPS and setting the region to Asia worked in the past, but seem to have been fixed by Yahoo in the meantime.

Backup other emails accounts

Windows users can backup all email accounts if they support either POP3 or IMAP. Most providers disable the protocols by default which makes it necessary to enable them in the web email options. Some, like Yahoo Mail, offer these features only for premium account owners.

MailStore home Features

MailStore Home offers a search which can be used to find emails. It can furthermore import existing folders if supported so that the original layout is preserved. The advanced search is sophisticated. It is possible to search for any of the following: Subject, Message Body, Attachment contents, sender, recipient, attachment file names.

Filters are available to search only specific folders, dates, email sizes, priorities or messages with or without attachments.

Emails are displayed right in the main program window from where they can be saved or printed.

Another interesting feature is the ability to export archived emails. It is for instance possible to export them into desktop email clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Windows Mail or Thunderbird, or to an email address via SMTP.

The latter option can be used to restore deleted email addresses to the primary email client or web mail client.

It is possible to schedule backups, but not from within the program. Existing backup configurations can be saved as shortcuts to the Windows desktop. These shortcuts can then be scheduled in the Windows Task Scheduler or a comparable program to run regularly, for instance once per day or month.

Verdict

MailStore Home is a flexible email backup solution. Especially the ability to re-import email messages after backup is interesting. The free software program can be downloaded from the developer homepage over at Mailstore.com.

The first available option is to add characters to the first part of the email address. A new alias is created instantly by adding the “+” character and a unique letter combination to the email address, for instance ghacks+news@hotmail.com. This is helpful for niche specific email conversations, especially since it is possible to store alias emails in their own folder in the Hotmail inbox.

The spam protection offered by this kind of alias system is negligible as it is possible to identify the real email address directly.

To counter this a second option to create aliases was introduced. This time as an option to create “completely different email addresses that you can use to receive email into your primary account without anyone knowing what your primary email address is”. These aliases are basically independent Hotmail or Live email addresses that are then linked to the account. It goes without saying that only free email addresses can be selected as aliases.

Windows Live and Hotmail users can add up to five of these aliases to the Hotmail account per year, up to fifteen total.

New aliases can be created on the following page: http://mail.live.com/?rru=createalias

A Hotmail login is required before the new alias can be created. The new email address is selected on the first screen which then redirects automatically to the Hotmail inbox.

Here it is then possible to select a folder or the inbox as the storage location for incoming emails for that email alias.

Microsoft sends a confirmation mail to the main account address that details some of the options that aliases offer:

• You can send email messages from this alias by clicking on your address (above the To line in the message you’re writing) and selecting your alias from the list.
• If you set up a separate inbox folder for your alias, messages sent to it will go to that folder. Otherwise, messages sent to your alias will just go to your regular inbox.
• Remember, you can’t sign in to Hotmail with your alias; you’ll need to sign in with your regular Hotmail address

It is possible to remove aliases at anytime from Hotmail. This may however have implications. Microsoft notes:

If you remove this email address, you won’t be able to use it to receive Windows Live mail, invitations, notifications, and alerts, or to be found through people search.

Links to alias creation and removal pages do not seem to be accessible from within Hotmail at this point in time. It is likely that Microsoft will add those options to the accounts directly to make it easier for users to create and remove aliases.

The option to add unique email addresses as aliases to a Hotmail account takes aliases to the next level. The option could be very interesting for users who have maintained several email addresses just for that purpose. (via)

Update: It is possible to create Hotmail aliases right from within the inbox. This is done with a click on the options button right next to the inbox. It opens up with a click and displays two options.

The Create a Hotmail alias option leads directly to the screen linked above.

The Hotmail Sign In page, and every other Hotmail page for that matter, is now accessible via HTTPS and HTTP. Hotmail users have the option to switch completely to HTTPS whenever they access the emailing service, to continue connecting via HTTP to Hotmail or to use HTTPS for individual connections.

They have two options to enable HTTPS permanently. The first option is to open https://account.live.com/ManageSSL, the second to load hotmail by opening https://www.hotmail.com/. Both choices display a sign in form that redirects to a configuration page.

Hotmail users should take note of the information on that page, especially the following paragraph:

mportant note: Turning on HTTPS will work for Hotmail over the web, but it will cause errors if you try to access Hotmail through programs like:

Outlook Hotmail Connector
Windows Live Mail
The Windows Live application for Windows Mobile and Nokia

What does it mean? It means that connections to Hotmail via Outlook Hotmail Connector, Windows Live Mail and the Windows Live application for Windows Mobile and Nokia won’t work anymore. Hotmail users who make use of these applications should not activate HTTPS permanently. The valid option for them is to load the HTTPS sign in page but cancel the request to always enable HTTPs when connecting to Hotmail.

This way they can connect to the Hotmail web page via HTTPS and continue connecting to the Hotmail account in other applications. Additional information are available at a Windows Live Inside blog post.

Up until recently there was no option to enable an option in Hotmail to use https automatically when connecting to the email provider’s website, including Hotmail Sign In. There have been options to force https connections but those were technical and limited to select web browsers.

Users who now connect to https://www.hotmail.com/ are greeted with a new message. It reads:

Trying to use Hotmail with HTTPS?

As long as you’re just reading and writing email, signing in with “https” gives you extra security. But this extra security disappears if you check your calendar, edit a contact, or go to another site. For the most secure connection, we strongly recommend that you change your settings to always use HTTPS.

Hotmail will automatically switch the user to HTTPS If the user clicks on the Always use HTTPS (recommended) button at the end of the message. A second page is displayed that offers additional information about connecting with HTTPS:

sing HTTPS will help keep your account secure from hackers-especially if you commonly use public computers or unsecure wireless connections.

Important note: Turning on HTTPS will work for Hotmail over the web, but it will cause errors if you try to access Hotmail through programs like:

Outlook Hotmail Connector
Windows Live Mail
The Windows Live application for Windows Mobile and Nokia

If you only need a temporary HTTPS connection, enter “https” in front of the web address instead of “http”.

Hotmail users need to select Use HTTPS automatically (please see the note above) and click the Save button to always connect to Hotmail with HTTPS.

Hotmail will from that moment on switch to https whenever the user connects to the Hotmail web page. The Hotmail sign in form should always show https in the address bar from that moment on.

It is highly recommended that Hotmail users switch to HTTPS immediately to improve security when connecting, signing in and working with Hotmail.

Windows Live ID users without a Hotmail account can simply visit hotmail.com to sign up for an account using their Windows Live ID. That’s the most comfortable option. Everyone else may use the option to sign up with an existing email address so that no hotmail.com email address gets created during signup.

Some of you sent feedback asking if there’s a way to use these features without the hassle of getting a brand new email address.

We understand. You already have at least one email address and you probably don’t need another. You may also use your existing address for things other than just email, such as signing in to online shopping sites, which makes changing even more challenging. Also, you might have an address that you really like, but a similar name might not be available on another email service. So we looked for a way to make it easier for people to give Hotmail a trial run.

Hotmail walks the user through setting up the connection to the old service, so that existing emails are imported to Hotmail using POP, and that the user can send and receive email messages from Hotmail with the primary email address.

The big question is: What’s the benefit of signing up for Hotmail this way?

Probably the most noteworthy benefit are abilities to make use of Hotmail features, such as the 25 Gigabyte SkyDrive storage that can be used to send large attachments without cluttering the inbox. If you are new to Hotmail you may want to check the Hotmail page over at Windows Live which offers a feature overview, walkthroughs and tips.

Some of the more interesting features include:

Sweep unwanted mail out
View photos and videos in your inbox
Unsubscribe from newsletters
View by conversation
View Microsoft Office files

It is a step in the right direction, to make it easier for users to use Hotmail without having to create another email address. The feature is currently rolled out. According to Dick Craddock, it may take a few days before the new feature set is available for all customer’s worldwide (via).