Confused about Outlook.com vs. Live Mail

Live Mail and Outlook.com are essentially the same thing.  If you log into http://mail.live.com/ or http://www.outlook.com/ using the same Microsoft ID, you should see the same mailbox, but possibly with a different user interface.  Eventually, the Hotmail/Live interface will be retired with the Outlook.com interface supplanting it.

Your iPhone, iPad, and Office Outlook client should be able to access any of your mail services without you needing to consolidate them.  However, if you wish to consolidate them, either Google Mail or Hotmail/Outlook.com/Live.com should work.  Each service is accessible via POP.  Google Mail also supports IMAP.  Each supports Exchange ActiveSync for IOS devices as well (although Google's Exchange ActiveSync will cease at the end of this month unless you begin paying for it).  Outlook can access Exchange ActiveSync natively with Outlook 2013 or via the Outlook Hotmail Connector for Outlook 2003 through 2010.

If you decode to consolidate and you want them all in the same mailbox in Office Outlook, then you'll need to use POP and have all of the accounts deliver to the same Inbox.  Outlook's other account types (i.e., IMAP and Exchange ActiveSync) require separate folders sets, distinct from any POP folder set.

You can also just consolidate into the online Outlook.com or mail.google.com mailbox, each of which has the ability to access other mail services via POP (although in my experience, Outlook.com is not very timely with its POP access to the other account).  You can also forward other mailboxes to the Outlook.com or Google Mail mailbox, allowing the messages to arrive in the same Inbox or sorting them in to separate folders using rules.

Hi Brian

I've just come across your reply to this point (as of 14 December 2014). In Calendar Live (via my "Hotmail - Outlook" account) is it possible to quickly jump to a particular date some distance in the past

eg 1 January 2002. Is there a keyboard shortcut for this. I know it's possible to do this in Desktop Office Outlook using Control G. You referred to the old interface being replaced by that of Outlook.com .

Regards

Richard Kevern

I've had so much trouble with this MS Windows Live Mail I've come to decide it isn't worth another moment of aggravation. Goodbye Live Mail. Google Gmail is so much easier to use. Easy to set up, takes no quantum-physics brain to handle, works all the time. What do we need something like this

convoluted email software called Live Mail. Toss it, everybody.    -LK

"Google Gmail is so much easier to use. "

Oh Really?  How do you resolve those instances when Google Gmail decides you shouldn't receive a message from someone (inbox, junk mail, or otherwise), despite your emailing the particular address in question and adding it to your contact lists.

In several years of using gmail, I have had multiple occasions where messages just disappear (where I can email myself from a different account and not even receive that email).  Yet there is no easy way to get support or an answer from gmail on why the service can be so flaky sometimes.

Don't get me wrong, hotmail/live/outlook has its own set of issues - for the longest time it didn't offer any imap support, which prevented hotmail/live/outlook from being multiple device (mobile / desktop) user friendly.

If you have some other mailbox forwarding messages to gmail, you should be able to examine the Internet headers to determine the forwarding service. Select the message in gmail, then click the down arrow to the right of the date and choose "Show original".

This will show you the headers which you can use to trace the flow of the message.

I used google mail for a long time, including via web and on several Android and Windows devices, although I don't now.  I never had an instance of losing a message.  I did have an instance of Microsoft losing a whole lot of email in one swell foop a few years ago - won't use them again. 

Many years ago (1990s or so) it was common for ISPs to block mail originating from certain other ISPs, primarily AOL, because they were a common source of spam.  I don't think that's been the case for a long time, thought, since spam blocking algorithms have become pretty effective.  Your lost mail might have been due to incorrectly identifying a message as spam.  Some ISPs used to reject as spam mail with a large number of multiple addressees that originated from other ISPs. 

Also, I think there is a lot of confusion over IMAP vs POP3.  I find POP3 to be much more friendly to multiple devices.  IMAP has the annoying characteristic of deleting an email from all devices if it's deleted on one, with no setting to prevent that.  I often keep old email for reference purposes on my desktop computer, but don't want it cluttering up my phone, tablet, and laptop, I have to be careful to save each one individually somewhere as a text file before I delete it from anything.  Very inconvenient and accident prone, particularly when travelling without access to my desktop computer.

Another problem is that it can be cumbersome or even impossible to move your mail from one IMAP service to another - your pretty much locked in.  With POP3 your mail is stored on your own computer(s).

IMAP was introduced primarily for corporate and government use, and stores all mail on a central server rather than downloading it.  This allows the IT staff to control it, back it up, etc. for archival and FOI purposes (think Hillary Clinton).  It wasn't optimized for individual users, although it certainly can be used that way.  It is promoted by a lot of cloud services and corporate entities serving the public, as it allows them various ways to generate income.