Are you having problems using Windows Live Mail for Hotmail accounts? Microsoft are running down Windows live Mail. There are loads of critical email comments on the web and “learned articles” about how Microsoft is dumbing down the facilities provided in replacement email software. There are several forms in which email data is transferred from a user sender to their server, from server to server, and lastly from server to the receiving user. Three common ones are. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. SMTP is used when email is delivered from an email client, such as Outlook Express, to an email server or when email is delivered from one email server to another. SMTP uses port 25. POP3 stands for Post Office Protocol. POP3 allows an email client to download an email from an email server. The POP3 protocol is simple and does not offer many features except for download POP3 normally uses port 110. IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. IMAP shares many similar features with POP3. It, too, is a protocol that an email client can use to download email from an email server. However, IMAP includes many more features than POP3. The IMAP protocol is designed to let users keep their email on the server. IMAP requires more disk space on the server and more CPU resources than POP3, as all emails are stored on the server. IMAP normally uses port 143. Suppose you use hMailServer as your email server to send an email to [email protected]. 1. You click Send in your email client, say, Outlook 2. Outlook delivers the email to hMailServer using the SMTP protocol. 3. hMailServer delivers the email to Microsoft's mail server, mail.microsoft.com, using SMTP. 4. Bill's Mozilla Mail client downloads the email from mail.microsoft.com to his laptop using the POP3 protocol (or IMAP). Simple ? … Yes? Well Microsoft are being “economical” with the truth. WLM will continue to work, with email addresses and particlar with a Hotmail address, but it requires a change of the protocol and the port numbers. The only way you can get detailed access to servers on screen, in order to change server type and port numbers Original account manually; and keep your existing emails and contact addresses; is by opening a new account (with the same name Duplicate account etc). as a duplicate. the number 1 is inserted automatically. I have done this and the accounts look like this. The following notes give a stage by stage instructions in setting this up. As a precaution, keep your email addresses safe. Export them to a new file. Click on Contacts Click on Export Having clicked on Export, click on Comma separated values (CSV) This screen is displayed. Chose a name for the file to receive you emails addresses. NB I chose my ‘email addresses’, which was NOT a good choice. When I searched for the file later using the windows search spyglass (bottom left of your computer screen), I got several generalist titles from the web offered. Choose something unique like “’your own name’ contact list”. Click on Browse to choose a filing place to save you contact addresses. The choice of filing location shown here is Computer>Microsoft account. The file is called my email addresses Type of file is CSV Click on Save This panel will appear and after a short delay show the green line progressing across. On completion the panel closes. You may wish to search for your file to make sure it is want you want. Use the spyglass search facility. This is the saved list of contacts which has been saved as an Excel file. To create/add a new email (duplicate) account. Click on accounts Clicking on accounts will display this screen. Click on Email Complete the email address, Password and display name, boxes IMPORTANT Click on the square in manually configure server settings. This will enable you to set the settings required to send and receive Hotmail accounts using Windows Live Mail. Click on next, which will display the screen below. The formats and port numbers used in Hotmail addresses have to be changed to the following. Note the port numbers are correct, and different from ones mentioned in the article at the beginning of this document. Make sure you tick the boxes as shown. Click on save/finish To avoid any ‘in’ or ‘out’ emails still being processed by the original account; click on the title of the original account and then on accounts and change the server URL details to a non- meaningful title. To do this click on the original account at the side of the screen. Click on accounts and properties. Click on server which will display the screen in the next row Delete the entry on the server URL box and type in ‘none’. This will prevent mail entering or leaving the original account. Click on apply and OK. When this procedure is complete, keep both accounts running and ignore the failed/error notices when sending and receiving email. Eventually you can delete the original account, say in a month’s time when all your emails in that account are redundant. Best Of Luck ! Alan Paul September 2016 . .