You can now read your Gmail or any other POP3 emails within Windows Live Hotmail.

Google introduced a while back its own version of importing emails from other POP3 email providers. Now it’s Microsoft’s turn to allow you to read all your Gmail or Yahoo Mail (Plus) or any other POP3 emails without leaving Windows Live Hotmail.

The steps are pretty straight-foward,

Add an email account option on Windows Live Hotmail

Login to your Windows Live Hotmail account and watch for a link on the left navigation bar that says “Add an e-mail account”. Click on that link to add a POP3 email to Windows Live Hotmail.

Add an email account page

Key-in the email address and the password for the account that you want to add to Windows Live Hotmail.

Advanced Options to give you better control

If you think you’d need fine control over the email account you are adding, click on the “Advanced Options” link and key-in the POP3 user name, Incoming mail server, Port number and SSL usage indication along with the email address and password.

Gmail on Windows Live Hotmail

Once finished you should be able to see a new link got added to the Windows Live Hotmail sidebar. Use that link to access email from that external email account.

Keep in mind that, adding an email account to Windows Live Hotmail requires that the email account that you are trying add supports POP3 access.

Not all email providers support POP3 access, for instance, the free Yahoo Mail version doesn’t support POP3 access and so if you try to add Yahoo Mail to Windows Live Hotmail you’d get an error like above. You’d need Yahoo Mail Plus! to gain access to POP3 support.

Make sure your external email account provider supports POP3 access and you’ll find external emails on Windows Live Hotmail really handy if you are avid user of Windows Live Hotmail.

Technorati Tags:
How To, Windows Live, Windows Live Hotmail