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How To Download All of Your Hotmail

Jessie Richardson Read more July 1, 2019

If you are the proud owner of a Hotmail account, congratulations, you’re part of a dying breed. Hotmail was, for lack of a better term, discontinued by Microsoft way back in 2013. This was part of a broader move towards a more cohesive service offering, and Outlook eventually replaced Hotmail. People with Hotmail accounts were grandfathered in but can still opt to transfer to an Outlook account.

Backing up your email is a good idea, especially the important messages. An older email account can become extremely cluttered and could even reach storage capacity.

For Hotmail account holders, there are a few good ways to download their emails to their hard drive. In this article, you’ll learn about three methods to do just that.

Download Your Emails Using Microsoft Outlook

If you have Microsoft Office on your computer, you can use the Outlook application to save messages easily. It may not be worth purchasing the entire Office suite for this operation, but if you’re already subscribed to Office 365, it is one more way to extract value.

outlook

First, launch Outlook on your device. If you’ve never used it before, you will be prompted to add an email account. Sign in using your Hotmail email address and password. Outlook is fully compatible with Hotmail’s servers, so there won’t be any further complications.

Upon connecting your account to Outlook, it will configure automatically and download all your emails to the app. Outlook has a very similar interface to the Outlook.com web application, so it should look familiar. To download emails, create a folder with the messages you want to save and then follow these steps:

In the File menu, click Open and Export.
On the right panel, click on Import/Export.
A dialog box will appear. Select Export to a File, then click Next, and select Outlook Data File in the following box.
Now you will see the folders in your email account. Select the folder that you created earlier and click Next.
Choose the destination where you want to save the folder and click Finish. Your emails will be saved in your chosen directory.

Download Emails with SysTools

A more straightforward method to download your emails is to use a piece of software designed for that purpose. SysTools Hotmail Backup Tool is a simple application made with the sole purpose of backing up emails from Hotmail.

To use it, first download and install the software. You can get a free trial or purchase a license. The license price stands at US$39 for a single account but the trial version will export up to 100 emails.

Once the installation is complete, launch SysTools. The very first screen will have fields for your email address and password. Enter your credentials and click Login. On the following screen, select your destination folder and click Start.

The process is automated from there. The software will export and save your emails in the specified directory. A dialog box will appear giving you the option to save a summary of the operation. You probably won’t need this, so click Close and you’re done.

Downloading Hotmail Emails Through the Mail App

If you’re running Windows 10, you already have the Mail app installed. Otherwise, you can download it from the Microsoft store. To launch it, type “mail” into your Windows search bar; it will be the first app that shows up.

As soon as you launch the application, it will ask you what kind of account you wish to use. Select Outlook and use your Hotmail address and password to log in. The Mail app will automatically link to your account and download all your email from Outlook.com servers.

mailapp

To download any email, all you have to do is open it and click on the three horizontal dots in the top-right corner. Select Save As from the drop-down menu and choose a destination for your email.

This is the simplest, most straightforward way to save your email messages. The only downside is that you will have to save each message individually. However, all the emails are saved on your computer as soon as you connect your Mail app to the Hotmail account. You can view them through the app even without internet access.

Better Safe Than Sorry

As you can see, downloading your emails is quite simple and probably a good idea to do on a regular basis. It’s not a likely scenario that Microsoft’s email servers will ever suffer a catastrophic failure, but they may experience downtime. Also, who knows where you might be and what emails you might need 10 years from now. There’s an inherent fragility in digital media, and it never hurts to have backups.

Any of these methods should do the trick for you, but the most expedient for holding on to a few messages is probably to use Microsoft’s Mail app.

Why do you need to save your emails? Have you ever been in a situation where you regretted not having backups of your messages? Let us know in the comments below.