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.)
How many emails are in your Hotmail inbox?
The number of unread emails you have in your Hotmail inbox is updated live, as new emails arrive: note that this does not indicate the entire number of emails in your inbox, only the number of unread ones. To know how many emails are inside your Hotmail inbox at any given time, simply count the number of "screens" of emails you have, and multiply this number by 35, which is the number of emails Hotmail currently displays in any given screen (both for inbox and other email folders). The last digit displayed ("48" on our inbox screenshot), is the total number of screens you need to multiply by 35 to get your total number of inbox emails.
Accessing your Hotmail inbox
By default, Hotmail will display the "Hotmail Today" screen after you login (you can customize this behavior and have Hotmail directly load your 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. (Tutorial update: this behavior has changed in the latest version of Hotmail, and the total number of emails in your inbox is no longer displayed - the number of unread emails still is.)
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.
Tip: use the Hotmail inbox link to check for new emails
As covered in our check Hotmail emails tutorial, you can use the Hotmail inbox folder link to check for new emails: instead of refreshing the entire screen, simply click inbox , and Hotmail will check the server for any new mail messages: although this works with other folders (custom and standard), you rarely want to check the Junk folder for spam, and all other emails arrive directly in your inbox. The same principle applies when you switch folder: if you are in (for example) the Drafts folder, and then go back to your Hotmail inbox, it will automatically be updated if new emails have arrived since you last looked at your inbox.
Hotmail inbox size, and Hotmail inbox size limit
Shortly after the new Hotmail was launched, the Windows Live Hotmail webmail service started including the "ever-growing storage" feature ("A feature of Windows Live Hotmail that increases the space available for your e-mail as you need it", straight from Hotmail Help) which, unlike traditional inboxes, actually expands as you use more space. In other words, there no longer is a Hotmail inbox size limit: this is one aspect of the service where Hotmail Plus (the premium, paid version of Hotmail) no longer trumps the free Hotmail, since -although Hotmail Plus starts with a 10Gb inbox size- both versions of the webmail service will increase the capacity of your inbox as needed.
As far as your Hotmail.com inbox size is concerned: the old Hotmail used to give you your current storage usage (including inbox and other email folders). Probably in part because of the new "ever-growing storage" feature, Hotmail no longer indicates the amount of spaced used by your emails. To determine the amount of emails, and size, of your Hotmail inbox, you can use an indirect measurement by setting up Hotmail in Windows Live Mail: your emails will be stored in files on your computer hard drive, and measuring the size of the folder containing your Hotmail inbox emails - as shown on the screenshot, just hovering your mouse cursor above the folder in Windows Vista or Windows 7 will indicate the size:
(A later Windows Live Mail tutorial will be dedicated to downloaded emails management.)
How to select all emails in your inbox
Your Hotmail inbox is subdivided into screens once it contains a certain number of emails: the arrows and pagination numbers at the bottom of the email listing allows you to navigate through screens of inbox emails (or any other Hotmail folder for that matter - the emails displayed depend on the folder currently selected).
To select all emails currently displayed in your inbox, click on the checkbox at the top of the inbox or current folder: this selects all the emails currently visible. If you have more emails, those that aren't visible will not be selected. But if -unlike us- you keep up with your Hotmail emails and file them as needed, you will rarely see multiple screens of unfiled emails in your inbox! This Select All checkbox, along with searching and sorting emails (covered in a later tutorial), give you powerful tools to manage emails in your Hotmail inbox. (At one point, Windows Live Hotmail used to support email rules (or "email filters") to automatically file your emails based on certain conditions: at the time of this writing, Hotmail has (temporarily we hope) discontinued this feature - we will update this tutorial if it changes.)
Empty your Hotmail inbox
If you want to delete all emails contained in your inbox (or "empty your Hotmail inbox"), you can use the technique we describe in our "Empty a folder" tutorial. Unfortunately, Hotmail has (temporarily?) discontinued this functionality, and the only two email folders you can currently empty with a click are the Deleted Items folder, and the Junk Mail folder - and, for the meantime, right-clicking on your inbox will not reveal the context menu containing an "Empty inbox" menu item. So, how should you empty your inbox?
To empty your Hotmail inbox, start by selecting all the emails it contains: depending on the number of emails you have, this step may need to be repeated a few times. Once all emails in your inbox are selected (using the method we described in the previous section), click on the Move to menu, which will display a list of standard Hotmail folders (inbox included), and your custom email folders. Click on Deleted, and all emails you selected in your inbox will be moved to the Deleted items folder. Should you change your mind, and decide to restore these emails, simply move them from the Deleted folder back to your inbox. This is the way you can empty your Hotmail inbox, at least until the Windows Live team decides to add back the "Empty folder / Empty Hotmail inbox" functionality we mentioned!
