Email Clients Tutorials
Hotmail Tutorial
Hotmail Inbox
The Windows Live Hotmail Inbox is the most central folder: all emails not flagged as spam (junk mail) are automatically delivered inside the Inbox. The only exception can come from filters you might have setup in your Hotmail account. The Inbox is the folder you most commonly use in Hotmail, since it contains all your mail. This tutorial covers the Hotmail Inbox in details.
Using Hotmail's Inbox
Like other Hotmail folders, the Hotmail Inbox label is in bold font if it contains any new email; if this is the case, it will be followed by a number between brackets, indicating the number of unread emails contained in the folder. (In this screenshot, the inbox contains unread emails.)
Accessing your Hotmail inbox
To view your Hotmail inbox content, simply click on the folder name or icon; both read and unread emails will be displayed. Notice below the toolbar visible from the Inbox:
On the left, Hotmail displays the total number of email messages inside the inbox (including unread messages). On the right, the number of pages of emails in the inbox is displayed; the number of emails displayed per page can be customized, and will be covered in a later tutorial. Each page number is a clickable link that will load the corresponding emails.
Notice how the Hotmail inbox background is darker: this indicates the email folder currently selected. The Hotmail theme used throughout this tutorial is called "Blue" - depending on your settings, colors will vary.
At the bottom of your folder listing, Hotmail displays a list of four buttons: Today, Mail, Contacts, and Calendar. Clicking the Mail button will bring you back to the Inbox, wherever you are.
Though their appearance changes slightly (in Hotmail's Calendar for example), these buttons are visible from all Hotmail panels.
If you are logged into the Windows Live service, clicking the Hotmail button will also bring you straight to your inbox folder.
Quick tip: Hit F, and then I to go to your Hotmail inbox with a keyboard shortcut.
Hotmail.com inbox vs. email program inbox
When you use an email program to check your Hotmail emails, the email program downloads copies of your emails; in each of our tutorials that explains how to setup Hotmail in an desktop email client, we specify that (except for certain Hotmail account setups like IMAP), you should tell the email application to leave copies of your emails on the server. Your Hotmail.com inbox and your local inbox will, then, contain the same emails: and you want to keep your Hotmail.com inbox and local inbox "sync'd" - aside from obvious practical advantages, it allows you to use your live Hotmail account as an "email backup" service of sorts.
If you did not follow one of our tutorials to setup Hotmail in your email program, be careful that most email clients will automatically *not* leave a copy of your inbox emails on the server. (Note that this remark only applies only if you have setup Hotmail as a POP3 email account.)
That kind of setup (synchronized inboxes) is optimal, since it allows you to check your emails from wherever you are with an internet connection: your Hotmail.com inbox will then have all the emails you saw at home the day before, on your computer (where you checked your Hotmail account from a desktop email program, as opposed to a web browser).
Why "inbox" in "Hotmail inbox"?
Calling "Hotmail inbox" the folder in which your new Hotmail emails arrive comes from brick-and-mortar office terminology, where many employees have a physical inbox in which papers (things to do or read) are dropped by colleagues and managers. Likewise, your Hotmail inbox collects all emails to read as they arrive (except for spam, which by default bypasses your inbox and goes straight to the junk mail folder).
A desktop email program like Microsoft Outlook also has an "outbox" folder, a temporary location where emails being sent (or "to send", if you are working offline) are stored. Windows Live Hotmail does not have an outbox, but, like Outlook, has a "Sent" folder to keep track of emails you have sent. So, calling the main email folder the "Hotmail inbox" is simply using an easy-to-understand, real-world analogy to describe a more abstract concept.
Since both Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail (among others) are providing online the emulation of a desktop email application, both follow the tacit convention of calling "inbox" the central folder of your email world. That way, everyone is on the same page, and this makes it easier (more intuitive) to switch between using an email program and a webmail service.