Hotmail in Outlook 2007

[Dan]

I have a paid Hotmail account because I wanted to be able to use Outlook to
check my mail (I was told once this was necessary).

It seems the timing coincides with the recent update to the look & feel of
Hotmail on the web, but at or around that time, I stopped being able to use
my Hotmail account in Outlook. I was getting an error, something about
cookies & error code 0x800CCC35.

Now after some searching I found some information about that I might have to
use the Outlook Connector so I installed it but it still doesn't work. Once I
added the mail account it gives an error that "The network connection has
been interrupted. Please try again later." In fact that message comes up
every 2 minutes or so when Outlook is open, as long as I keep the Hotmail
account added.

Please, a fix? I've had my Hotmail account now for almost 10 years and would
like to not have to change it, though the alternatives are feeling better &
better every day.

 

[Dan]

Argh! Nevermind. I didn't realize Outlook uses IE's proxy settings, which
were hosed in this case since I was testing something a couple weeks back
briefly & completely forgot about it.

Fixed the proxy in IE & Outlook fetches my Hotmail just fine now like it
always has.

 

[VanguardLH]

Argh! Nevermind. I didn't realize Outlook uses IE's proxy settings,
which were hosed in this case since I was testing something a couple
weeks back briefly & completely forgot about it.

Fixed the proxy in IE & Outlook fetches my Hotmail just fine now like
it always has.

I doubt you have a paid Windows Live Hotmail account but instead
perhaps an MSN Hotmail Premium account. However, I thought either
provided access to Microsoft's POP and SMTP mail hosts. I know that
Microsoft re-added POP and SMTP access to Windows Live Hotmail accounts
back in Nov 2007 (but not to MSN Hotmail Premium accounts). So it
appears that you are NOT using POP and SMTP to receive and send your
e-mails. Instead you were using the WebDAV protocol (and now using the
Deltasync protocol with the Outlook Connector add-on). Those are
web-oriented protocols that communicate over HTTP and hence why your
web browser's settings affected your ability to get to Microsoft's mail
hosts. While you can continue using HTTP/WebDAV (now HTTP/Deltasync)
to connect to your Hotmail account, I would think you would prefer to
use POP and SMTP since that is part of why you pay for the Plus or
Premium account.

For Windows Live Hotmail Plus accounts:
POP:
port: 995
SSL : enabled
host: pop3.live.com
SPA : disabled
username: <yourname>@<domain>.com (<domain> = live, hotmail, msn)
password: Windows Live ID password
SMTP:
port: 25 (or 587 if your ISP blocks port 25 traffic)
SSL : enabled (in OL2007, select TLS instead of SSL)
host: smtp.live.com
authenticate to SMTP host: yes
username: <yourname>@<domain>.com (<domain> = live, hotmail, msn),
or reuse login credentials for POP
password: Windows Live ID password

Someone else that uses an MSN Hotmail Premium account will have to tell
you the settings when using that older service (if it hasn't been
already been converted to a Windows Live Hotmail Plus account). It
might be that MSN Hotmail Premium accounts became qualifying accounts
as of Sept 21, 2007 to use the above Live servers, so try those
settings.

The only advantage (to the user) in using the HTTP e-mail protocol
(instead of POP and SMTP) is that it is somewhat IMAP-like in that the
server- and client-side folders are kept in sync. POP only knows about
a mailbox (which is the Inbox folder when you use the webmail interface
to your account), not any of the other server-side defined folders. POP
is a well-known and long established e-mail protocol whereas
Microsoft's HTTP protocols are proprietary and may have problems (to
what degree I am not aware simply because of my disinterest in them).