Use Hotmail on the iPhone

Aug 30, 2010 - 97 Comments

hotmail iphone If you use a Hotmail account, you’ll be happy to hear that you can now use your Hotmail account on your iPhone thanks to Microsoft enabling Exchange ActiveSync support. This allows Hotmail to push and sync email, calendar, and contacts to your iPhone.

Set up Hotmail on the iPhone

Here are the steps to setup Hotmail to sync and push to your iPhone (this works on the iPad too):

  • Launch Settings
  • Tap on “Mail, Contacts, Calendar”
  • Tap onto “Add Account”
  • Select “Microsoft Exchange”
  • Enter your full Hotmail email address into both the Email and Username fields
  • Leave Domain blank
  • Enter your password
  • Enter “Hotmail” as the Description
  • Tap onto “Next”
  • Now you must enter the server, use “m.hotmail.com” for the Server name then tap onto “Next”
  • The iPhone will now verify that your Hotmail information is entered correctly, the next screen you’ll be able to enable Mail, Contacts, and Calendars

Hotmail is the original web mail, so it’s not surprise there’s still millions of hotmail accounts still in use today despite the competing offers from Google, Yahoo, and others. It’s a bit surprising it took Microsoft this long to get Hotmail working with the iPhone, but better late than never.

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Posted by: Manish Patel in How to, iPhone

97 Comments

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  1. Jayne says:

    Hi Everyone, can someone please help me in to how to verify my hotmail account on my iPhone 5 ?
    What is the server name?
    Help please I am frustrated

  2. Kevin says:

    I just set up Hotmail on my iPod Touch. Everything works fine but the Inbox only displays unread messages. How do I get access to the entire Inbox?

  3. Alison says:

    Great advice! I changed my hotmail password and couldn’t get my emails to send from my iphone. I followed the above and it still wouldn’t send. So thanks to whoever posted to deactive the old hotmail pop3 account. Now I can send e mails! Thanks!

  4. evropej says:

    Go to the email account, update SMTP server, then click on SMTP server again and update the password in that field. Now you can send emails. You dont need to change anything else.

    There is a glitch that when you update the OS on the phone, it doesnt carry over the password for outgoing mail. This is a well know glitch. Not sure if they resolved it in iOS 6 but the fix does work on iOS6.

  5. Dan says:

    WOW! did not expect this to work! i have not tried using microsoft exchange i use other, and pop.3.live something and i had problems with passwords, recieving mail and finally it wouldnt send anything out from my iphone. THANKYOU

  6. Graham says:

    Maje sure you have typed your password under incoming mail server and one again under outgoing mail server sections. I can now receive and send emails. This is on iPhone 4s.

  7. jan says:

    did it all , tried it all finally came across that the password i had changed it to on my computer was too long!! made a new shorter one and i have hotmail on my phone again THaNK U!!!

  8. Bree says:

    I’ve had hotmail set up on my IPhone 4S for months with no problems and only recently it won’t let me access it. Tells me I need to verify my password which I keep typing in correctly, this has also happened to my roommate who has an IPhone 4, any help would be greatly appreciated! It only started this maybe 5 days ago.

  9. Virpi says:

    I was SO happy to find this thread. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was going nuts! I did have to delete the old account first to get it to work, but it’s just fine now. (MSN outgoing email)
    Yay. :)

  10. Jacob says:

    Thanks for this — saved me from my wife’s wrath when her phone wouldn’t send Hotmail any longer!

  11. Amanda says:

    Thanks SadiphoneGirl. Changing the password took a couple tries but it did eventually work. After you had to go into settings and re-enter your new password.

  12. Lucky Girl says:

    When I added my new account, I got the incorrect password message a dozen times no matter how slow and careful I was.

    Only until the last time. I turned OFF the ON buttons that showed up with the new account. I clicked SAVE. THEN, I turned the Off buttons to ON, and miraculously the information was accepted and the new account works perfectly.

    Good luck all.

    • SadiPhoneGirl says:

      How did you get to where you could turn it from on to off or off to on? I can do NOTHING on my phone right now. As soon as I unlock my phone, it prompts for my Hotmail pw (which I changed last night through my computer browser). It just keeps prompting and prompting. I cannot access anything on my phone! I went back and changed my ypw to 8 characters, all lowercase, no numbers to make it super simple. Still not working. This is killing me!

  13. Bruno says:

    I had the recurring “password error” and the “server connection failed” while configuring some hotmail acocunts on my iPhone and iPad (all iOS 5.x) even if I knew the password and servernames were OK.

    I tried changing the password
    I tried the exchange and ‘other’ account setups on iPad and iPhone
    I tried making password shorter
    I tried all the things other people had posted.

    Nothing helped.

    in the end, I discovered it was related to parental controls which I installed 3 years ago through windows live essentials on a Vista laptop. It did limit the hotmail account as it was supervised by another. I never felt parental controls was of good value for me, so I took the step to remove it following this good explanation:

    http://explore.live.com/windows-live-family-safety-remove-uninstall-faq

    The problem on iPhone and iPad was immediately solved. I found it interesting I had to remove software from a Vista laptop to make things work on i-devices, but the service is obviously tied to Windows Live services, so it does make sense.

    Hope this helps others – good luck.
    Bruno

  14. Kelly says:

    Thanks so much! Couldn’t figure this out for the life of me but it worked! :)

  15. gul says:

    yayy finally it works after several time trying.. for iphone 4 users just change ur hotmail password make it short..than delete that existing email account on ur iphone , and do all that steps above again. it will workkk

  16. Sarah says:

    I have the iphone 4s, i set up hotmail first time without any problems and since two days ago it keeps saying unable to verify account information or incorrect email/password. I’ve tried everything I can think of a dozen times and read god knows how many posts on the Internet and I still can’t fix it!! What on earth is wrong with it? Hotmail is the only email account I have and I have some very important emails I need to read.. I can’t even access it from my browser. HELPPPP PLEASEEE!!!

  17. Emma says:

    TO EVERYONE WHO HAD THE INCORRECT PASSWORD PROBLEM:
    I was getting incredibly frustrated with this too…..logged into my hotmail elsewhere and changed my password to a shorter one….worked first time!
    Hope it does for you too!

  18. dog guy says:

    I was having this issue too when I recently changed my Hotmail password online. Thunderbird and my iPhone wouldn’t sync with the new password. My new password was 18 characters long. I went back to Hotmail.com and changed it to something only 8 characters long. That solved the problem for both my iPhone AND Thunderbird.

    • Craig says:

      I had the same issue wth the incorrect password message. Here is what I discovered. I recently changed my hotmail password to what I thought was a string 18 characters long. Well, although hotmail will allow you to think you have created a 18 character password it actually only recognizes the first 16 characters. Logging in from a browser you can type all 18 characters and you will successfully login. Using all 18 characters on the iphone mail setup will cause a failed login. Entering just the first 16 characters in mail setup resolved the issue on my iphone. I also could login to the browser based hotmail by just typingthe first 16 characters of the password. Hope this helps someone.

  19. Tuff Luck says:

    I keep having the same problem. Both my Hotmail accounts worked perfectly, then after a while (6 months or so) I can receive my email fine, but run into problems sending them.

    **I think it has something to do with Hotmail requiring you to ‘sign in’ within 6 months or so**

    I’ve found if I go into ‘Settings’, delete the account from my iPhone, then instantly set it back up (inputting my email address & password) & it works fine again!….Until 6 months down the line, when I have to do it again. Hope this helps ;)

  20. Bruce MacKinnon says:

    oh come on, a year and more after hotmail was enabled and we still have all these problems? i hate Microsoft with a passion!!!

    The phone will not accept my hotmail pass word, no way….

    what on earth do I do?

  21. HEADACHETHNX2IPHONE says:

    I did everything suggested but when I input m.hotmail.com,
    it says unable to verify Account information. I have 3G speed iphone 4s.

    This is frustrating.

  22. hotmail crap says:

    password incorrect..

    or

    unable to verify account

    gmail and yahoo works fine…..hotmail is crap

  23. Aaron says:

    Works perfectly, thanks! Now got hotmail working on my iPhone at last! It took me ages before but that took me two minutes.

  24. cpcarlsbad says:

    Thank you for this post! Hotmail back up and working…

  25. Erica says:

    Agreed! I have tried set up several times over and all it ever tells me is that I have the wrong password and it asks for it again. I’m trying to set it up with the same password that works on the actual website, so what’s the deal?

  26. spike says:

    I’ve tried everything suggested to get my hotmail account on my iphone 4. Nothing is working. Could it be because my password for hotmail is 18characters long? It just says can’t connect to server and invalid account or password. What is up? I did everything mentioned here many times, still not working. Help please!

  27. TheHeadmare says:

    I started having problems with hotmail recently. I had the sign-in bookmarked, & a mobile version always appeared, until yesterday. I already have another email account in the mail app, so I tried downloading an app (air hotmail) that did not work. Finally I downloaded Messenger, & can check my hotmail that way.

  28. prion says:

    Thanks for such a simple outcome – a lot of site do not know the server address for the iphone input – a lot say you need to subscribe, thanks once again.

  29. Simsta says:

    Yay!! Thanks so much…..I even gave up while I had my 3gs but now finally have it on my 4 :)

  30. Sheraye says:

    WONDERFUL! I can finally send email as well as receive it! THANKS SO MUCH

  31. Wes says:

    This worked perfectly! My smtp Hotmail account stopped sending mail a few months ago and I was perplexed until reading your simple instructions. Now I can even organize my mail in the folders I created within Hotmail and I wasn’t ever able to do that before. Thank you very much!

  32. Bobby says:

    Hi
    I setup exchange for hot mail on my iPhone 4
    It doesn’t show my recent sent messages from my computer on the iPhone. My yahoo mail shows mail sent from my computer in the sent folder
    Help as I need them on both for work

  33. KarlG says:

    Worked an absolute treat for me thanks!

    For those who this still isn’t working for, try deleting the original account you had set up on ur iPhone, and start a new one for the same one. Using the information above, it has worked perfectly for me and now I can SEND and receive from my 3GS. :D

  34. April says:

    Thank you SO much! I was getting tired of using the browser on my iPhone to check my Hotmail (which I use for school). After all this time, I finally decided to look up how to add my Hotmail account to my phone. Yay!! Big help!

  35. Ab says:

    My hotmail Exchange account just lost the bulk of my email history on my iphone. What was showing the last 700+ messages is now only showing 30+. I didn’t change any of the settings. WHy did this happen and gow do I fix it?

  36. AndyG says:

    I have tried this on several occasions. I get “Unable to Verify Account Information”

    Does anybody have any helpful suggestions please? I dont understand this – I’ve been using hotmail on my iphone4 for a year without problems and then all of a sudden it just stopped working. No settings etc changed, although about a week before my hotmail account was hacked – might that have anything to do with it?

    Dont want to change email provider as I have a great address that I wont get elsewhere, but if i cant get this sorted i will (with no other regrets) say goodbye to hotmail after 12 years

    Thanks in advance for any comments

    • oscar says:

      that message gives me everytime i try to configurate it can somebody help us or explain why this is happening??

  37. Tom says:

    Have received an email titled “Please sign in to your Hotmail account” saying I need to login and will see a picture and then a standard jumbled letters/numbers which have to be typed in before being allowed to send emails again (to prevent automated junk). But when I log in on a iPhone that screen doesn’t appear.

    Work doesn’t allow access to personal email accounts, and I won’t be home for days, so why can’t Microsoft configure this to work with iPhone? Is there something else I need to do?

    Any help appreciated.

    Tom

  38. Ben says:

    I’m having trouble sending Hotmail from my iPhone. It worked earlier today, but now it’s saying that a connection to the server cannot be established. Gmail works fine, and Hotmail works fine from laptop.

    My Hotmail account was hacked yesterday. I changed my password, etc. and it worked fine from iPhone until just a few minutes ago. I’ve deleted and re-added Hotmail per directions above several times, and I can’t get it to work.

    HELP PLEASE! Thanks!

  39. Joejitzu says:

    Me and my wife both has iPhones mine is ipone4 and hers is the 3GS. Hotmail worked fine with mine. But I had problems setting hers up. Had to us izymail. Going to try this fix on her iPhone. Do I need to put m.hotmail.com in the out mail server and in mail server as well

  40. Cedric says:

    Thanks a lot for the tip guys!
    One problem remains though: when I send e-mails, they appear to be sent from myaddress@hotmail.com@hotmail.com, hence making it impossible for my contacts to reply without deleting the second @hotmail.com
    Any thoughts?

  41. Linda says:

    I know everyone has already said it, but these directions worked perfectly for syncing my hotmail account. It was driving me crazy. Thanks so much for sharing!!

  42. […] your full Hotmail email address into both the Email and Username […]

  43. Michele says:

    It keeps telling me I have the wrong password

  44. Bronny says:

    Had hotmail set up perfectly before I synched with computer. Now I get an error message not about to verify account. Or, when it does get past that, it goes into checking mail, but never actually finds any. I deleted my account and started afresh, but just can’t get it to work.

  45. Merv says:

    Just what I was looking for an it works perfectly! Thank you.

  46. Christine says:

    I can access my emails on my iphone through hotmail, however what I read and delete on iphone does not show up on hotmail and vice versa. Somehow they still do not seem to be synced correctly? WHat can I do?

  47. Dave says:

    After I add the account when I try to get my emails it says server connection failed what does that mean?

  48. Weslemkoon says:

    I used this fix,,it worked great,,now 2 days later it says username or password is incorrect so I went back and redid the fix and it says that account is already in use..wwahhh

  49. Avy says:

    Not connecting to server

  50. Avy says:

    Hi i followed the instructions and everything is ok but after it says noy connectibg to server.

  51. Greg says:

    Everything has worked great except that I am not able to use my hotmail contact list when writing a new email. Any way to make that accessible?
    Thanks

  52. david says:

    mine use to work through the mail on my iphone, but now it does not. also it use to save my password in the browser, but now I have to enter it everytime.

  53. Pardeep says:

    Hey!
    So my hotmail is sync to my iphone 4 and it works great. One question, when i have already read a message from my inbox on the iphone, it still shows that message as being “new”when i actually log into my hotmail account. Any way to fix this?

    • LC says:

      I’m having the same exact issue regarding the read messages and basically doing double work. After doing some investigating, it seems that (unfortunately) hotmail is not up to speed with making this work. I have read that gmail seems to run more smoothly in both directions, but I’m still unsure if that same issue exists there. I am considering changing my hotmail to gmail, but first will open an account just to see if it works.

  54. meg says:

    Ok so i followed all these and it worked but now its says my exchange password is incorrect even though it is? HELP!

  55. natasha says:

    PERFECT! worked first time

  56. Aaron says:

    Worked perfectly first time. Excellent tutorial. Thank you.

  57. bhenchot says:

    Great guide. By the way, I have 30 messages in my Inbox but it only shows 1. In other folders, I have even more but it chooses to show 4 in some cases, none in others..

    I’m guessing this is some bit of software deciding for me what is recent and what is not? Is there a setting to let me see everything?

    • bhenchot says:

      Never mind. I figured out how to do it. If you go to settings for this exchange account there’s something asking you how many days back you want to sync and there’s an option for the equivalent of “as far back as you can go.”

      Danke schon..

  58. muppix says:

    So does this mean that one could also configure Outlook to use Hotmail as an Exchange account? Or have Microsoft crippled this to prevent it taking away sales from Exchange hosting?

  59. GB says:

    Works great within the mail program. All folders now synch! One problem when trying to send from the photo app; it will not send with the new Exchange account as the default. Any fix?

    • GB says:

      I answered my own question. By experimenting i found that it is necessary to delete the old hotmail account (the POP3 one) rather than just de-activating it.

  60. Vladster says:

    Excellent tip. It worked like a charm…

  61. JUNE says:

    thank you so much . this worked first time so so happy.

  62. Larry says:

    I followed the directions, but it just keeps saying my password is incorrect. Help!

    • Kevin says:

      I too am having this same issue, it says my password is incorrect, I have carefully typed it in several times, to no avail. Any help would be good

      • Craig says:

        Me too. Exchange not working, but works as POP3. Only “basic” folders are seen (inbox/sent/trash). Added folders not seen; Gmail and Yahoo works fine.

        • Sean says:

          On the Domain ‘Username’ you need to enter your full e-mail address again. Every tutorial seems to leaves that out for some reason. Had to find it on another website (Only one of seven I looked at).

  63. Francis says:

    I hope this is not out of topic.

    I followed the instructions above and it worked. However, I still have a few questions:

    1)Does hotmail use IMAP or Pop3 for the iphone? i am a bit confused

    2)I can’t seem to locate my hotmail junk mail box on my iphone. Is there a way to show my hotmail junk mail box on my iphone? Sometimes, my important mails on hotmail go to my hotmail junk box.

    My yahoo mail on my iphone shows the junk mail box.

    Thanks. I would appreciate any help or clarifications.

  64. John king says:

    Hi send me info about pop3

  65. John king says:

    Hi send me info if I can use Japanese iPhone. To pop3

  66. LBO says:

    Thank you so much!!! I got the iPhone 4 a week ago and no matter what it wouldn’t let me log in, it keep saying incorrect pop3.live.com username or password. But this worked great first try! Good luck to all.

  67. Pawat says:

    Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love this site!!!!!!!1

  68. shaggyboy says:

    Thanks a lot. Perfect guide. Never knew this was possible.

  69. Kaven Rodrigo says:

    Perfect guide. I could not send hotmail till i folowed this. thanks. on my 3gs ios 4 Now mail works well

  70. muslat says:

    I do that but is still ask me the password
    and I give it a password
    I hope it is work

    thank you

  71. sault says:

    And more, with Exchange you can´t send e-mails.

  72. George says:

    Older hotmail accounts could use POP3 on the iPhone; I did.

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