Migrating Hotmail™ to FastMail.FM

Hotmail™ has announced that it will no longer provide access through Outlook Express to free Hotmail™ users. This also means that you will no longer be able to download message from Hotmail™ to FastMail.FM. It is important that you follow the instructions on this page to download your messages ASAP, because after Hotmail™ changes their policy it will be very difficult to migrate your email.

FastMail.FM provides, for free, access to IMAP. IMAP is a great system that provides everything that Hotmail's Outlook Express integration does and much more.

The good news is that FastMail.FM has prepared a toolkit to allow you to migrate all of your email and addresses from www.hotmail.com to your new FastMail.FM account. We think you'll be glad you've made the switch to FastMail.FM, and we're not the only ones; for instance, The Sydney Morning Herald described FastMail.FM as "faster and far superior to Hotmail on every level". The migration process is easy; just follow these instructions. You may want to print them out before you start.

Notes

  1. Email messages will be kept intact, including all headers, attachments, etc.
  2. Only your Inbox is transferred. To transfer other folders, move their contents into your Inbox using the www.hotmail.com web interface

Email

At www.hotmail.com

  1. Log into Hotmail's web interface, and move any messages you want to transfer into your Inbox.

At FastMail

  1. Create a FastMail.FM account if you do not already have one
  2. Log in to your FastMail.FM account
  3. Click 'Options', and then 'POP Links'
  4. Enter "Hotmail" as the POP Link name
  5. Leave the server name blank, choose 'Hotmail' as the link type, and enter your Hotmail™ user name and password in the relevent fields
  6. Click 'Done'
  7. You are now on the Mailbox page. There is a button marked 'Do', and to the left is a menu, at the bottom of which is a list of your POP Links. Select 'Hotmail' from this list, and click 'Do'. Voila--all your Hotmail messages have been downloaded!
  8. Tell all your correspondents your new address, but from time to time repeat the previous step (choose 'Hotmail' and click 'Do') to download any new Hotmail™ messages that people have sent to your old address (until Hotmail close off access to this system.)

Addresses

In Windows (requires Windows 95 or later)

  1. If you have not already done so, configure Outlook Express to connect to Hotmail™, by following these instructions.
  2. Choose 'Run' from the 'Start' menu, type wab, and click OK
  3. Select 'Synchronize Now' from the 'Tools' menu; you should now see all your Hotmail™ addresses in your Windows address book
  4. Open Outlook Express, and select File->Export->Addresses from the menu; select 'CSV' when prompted for a type, type a filename to save as when requested, and click next (accepting the defaults) for the remainder of the Export Wizard

Now go to FastMail

  1. Go to the Addresses screen and click 'Upload addresses'.
  2. Click 'Browse' select the file you saved from Outlook Express
  3. Select 'Outlook Express' from the 'Data Format' popup menu
  4. Click 'Upload' to upload the addresses
  5. Your addresses are now uploaded. To edit them, click 'Addresses' at the top of the screen in FastMail.FM. To use them when creating a new message, either use the Address Book on the Compose screen, or use FastMail.FM's automatic completion feature.