In what I can only describe as the quietest release of information regarding such a useful feature, Microsoft enabled free POP3 access to Hotmail accounts in United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Apparently more countries are getting the feature later in the year. I guess this means the United States are also on the waiting list.
How do you do this? It’s not yet available through the iPhone email wizard, you’ll have to do it a little bit differently…
- Go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Add Account…
- Other
- Add your desired name, password and description as usual but not your email (Windows Mobile users may remember this old trick!)
- Add your email as something slightly different, for example if I was adding ian.rathbone@hotmail.com I would instead write ian.rathbone@hotmail.co
- This will allow you to enter your details manually. Choose the POP3 tab.
- Change your address to the correct address (in our example: ian.rathbone@hotmail.com)
- Incoming Host Name: pop3.live.com
- User Name: Your Windows Live ID (the email address you’re using?)
- Password: Your Password
- Outgoing Host Name: smtp.live.com
Save and go! You should have Hotmail on your iPhone. The only problem I’ve noticed so far is that my read emails aren’t reflected in Hotmail.
Fortunately I don’t really mind as I hardly use this account anymore, GMail won me over years ago!
Let us know your experiences and how I can improve this little tutorial!
January 30th, 2009 at 20:16
One thing to remember on msn and hotmail accounts is that you can get the message you require a plus account to access pop3 msn , by clicking yes on the set up it will after a few minutes register the msn or hotmail accounts without a problem , i think its a microsoft problem as a live.nl ect works first time without a delay , if it does not work for you the first time try again
any .co.uk hotmails work also without a problem
January 31st, 2009 at 11:49
does this work with windows mobile as well?
February 2nd, 2009 at 11:30
@MattSays yes it should work with any device, this will allow you to use POP3 Hotmail anywere, Windows Mobile, Outlook, or even via GMail.
February 2nd, 2009 at 11:32
@thumper i’m not too sure what you mean, you don’t need a plus account anymore to access hotmail via POP3 in the mentioned regions
February 3rd, 2009 at 06:48
@ian the warning on the msn accounts does come up as I still get it , but by clicking on ok it will work . What can happen if you get the msn premium account warning is to do the following . Click on the next button and wait , it will after a minute come up with the fail message , next when you get the small box at the bottom of the screen with 2 options save and edit , choose edit and change the msn settings for the pop and smtp to the pop3.live.com and smtp.live.com and press the save , then the msn account will work without any problems , I will make a screen shot of the warning you can get and post it here. It seems not all the msn accounts have this problem just depends on which country you live in or if you have an old account . And yes this live.com trick does work on all makes of phones that have email support also if you own a mac or don’t like the windows live mail app you can use your own mail programme to recieve msn emails , I have all of my accounts in outlook together with my isp emails ,nice in one place:)
February 3rd, 2009 at 09:51
@Thumper is the warning if you are a premium subscriber then?
February 8th, 2009 at 14:08
for some reason all im getting is my “inbox” folder, no junk, sent, drafts or deleted folders.
is this normal or should i be getting the other folders?
February 10th, 2009 at 09:21
Hi Lee, I’m not too sure what you’re supposed to get I’m afraid. I get Inbox, Sent and Drafts if that helps?
June 18th, 2009 at 22:43
Hi, I tried your suggestion and it works for sending mail but I cannot receive. It says something a long the lines of “Connection to pop3.live.com failed”. What do I do?
Also it only says “Trash”, no Inbox, Outbox, Junk, ethatEhat do I do?
July 28th, 2009 at 18:14
I’ve got three hotmail accounts.
One is a hotmail.com which is working fine, one is a hotmail.co.uk which i can’t get to work and the other is a live.co.uk which also doesn’t work.
Hotmail support has been rubbish asking me to fill out a help form which resulted in the support being fill out a help form (the same one I had already filled out)