How to Enable Hotmail POP3 Access in India and other Countries?

Mrinmay Bhattacharjee | January 23, 2009 More

Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free webmail service of the Windows Live Microsoft brand provided by Microsoft.

Currently Hotmail POP3 access is feasible only for people residing in Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Japan, France, Spain, Australia, United Kingdom and Canada. This means other countries including India don’t have access to Hotmail POP3! This post features Hot to Enable POP3 Access of Hotmail for others too!

For those who don’t know about POP3, here’s a brief definition:

POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) is the most recent version of a standard protocol for receiving e-mail. POP3 is a client/server protocol in which e-mail is received and held for you by your Internet server.

Periodically, you (or your client e-mail receiver) check your mail-box on the server and download any mail, probably using POP3. This standard protocol is built into most popular e-mail products, such as Eudora and Outlook Express. It’s also built into the Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers.

This means you don’t have to go to your Inbox always, just download all e-mails on your Computer Hard Drive by means of Thunderbird, Outlook Express or any other Popular E-mail Clients.

Now in order to have access to Hotmail you have to change some settings in the Hotmail Account itself.

Following are the main steps:

Click on Options present at the Right Hand Side, now click on More Options

more-options-in-hotmail-pop3

Now click on View and Edit your Personal Information

edit-your-details-hotmail

Now click Registered Information

registered-information-hotmail-pop3

Now Change your Country to any one of these: Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Japan, France, Spain, Australia, United Kingdom and Canada. (Remember, there’s NO Harm in doing so. You can set your Country back to original, once Hotmail adds support for your Country)

Now when you setup Hotmail via E-mail Client, you will be asked for POP3 Configuration. SImply enter the following:

POP Server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)
POP SSL Required?: Select Yes
Username: abc.xyz@hotmail.com (where abc.xyz is your Hotmail E-mail Address.
Password: xxxxxxxx
SMTP Server: smtp.live.com (Port 25)
Authentication required?: Select Yes
TLS/SSL required? Select Yes