Receive your Hotmail through Mail.app

It seems that everyone has had a Hotmail account at one point in their online lives, and for the millions of people who still depend on Hotmail to provide something more than a junk mail account, there’s finally a way to get your messages into Apple’s Mail.app. Before you get excited, let me give you the negatives:

• You will only be able to receive email from Hotmail. If you want to send email, you will need to already have another account set up in Mail.app, and your outgoing mail will go through that account, not your Hotmail account.
• Another piece of software will be running in the background to make this happen. It’s a fantastic fix, but the integration is not seamless.
• You will be getting POP access, not IMAP (so no synchronization like you get with many other services).

If you’re still interested, read on!

Getting MacFreePOPs

MacFreePOPs is a free piece of software that we will need to accomplish our goal. You need to download it, drag the application to your Applications folder, and then open it up.

Here is the window we are presented with when we open MacFREEPOPs:

As you can see, I’ve already covered up most of the image with instructions, mostly because these instructions are crucial to getting you up and running:

• If MacFreePOPs says the service is running, press the button to stop the service.
• Then, click the button that says “Updates available…” and run the program’s updater.
• After the updater is finished, quit MacFreePOPs and restart it.
• Wait a moment, and see if the “Updates available…” button comes up again. When I installed MacFreePOPs, I had to run updates twice before the program was truly up-to-date. Repeat the process of updating and quitting/restarting until no more updates are available.
• Then proceed…

Once the program is completely up-to-date, make sure the service is not running, then click the “Extra options” triangle to reveal all settings. I’m not going to go through all the settings on the “MacFreePOPs” tab yet, so click on “freepopsd service.”

Here, you must do simply what the image shows:

• Click “Answer on the port” and type “2000.”
• Click “of the address” and type “127.0.0.1.”
• Then click to start the service.

Keep the program open and then open Mail.app.

Setting up Hotmail in Mail.app

Now that we’re in Mail.app, we need to open the Preferences (from the Mail menu). Then, click on Accounts. In the lower left corner, you should see the + and – buttons. Click the + button to start adding an account. Your window should look like this:

• Type in your name.
• Type in your full Hotmail address, including the @hotmail.com portion.
• Type in your Hotmail password.
• Uncheck “Automatically set up account” (note: this option will probably disappear once you type in your Hotmail address anyway).
• Click Continue.

Now you should get this window:

• For account type, choose POP.
• For the description, I simply wrote, “Hotmail,” but you can choose anything.
• The incoming mail server must be 127.0.0.1 (sneaky people, don’t append it with :2000).
• The user name is again your full Hotmail address, along with your password. These will likely be filled in.
• Now, when you click Continue, you’ll get that warning message like I did. We are ignoring it, and again clicking Continue.

Now you’ll get this screen:

• If you want to send outgoing mail via your Hotmail account, you need to fill this information in. If you’ve already set up an account with outgoing mail service, you should be able to choose the outgoing mail server from the pull-down menu and then enter your user name and password (if necessary). I can’t show you what to type here, since it’s completely dependant upon your account setup.
• If you have no other accounts, you can simply type 127.0.0.1 for the server but understand this will not actually give you outgoing mail.
• Then click Continue.
• You’ll be presented with one last window showing you all of your settings. Click to complete the setup process.

Now that we’re back at the Account Preferences screen, make sure your Hotmail account is selected, then pressed the Advanced tab like so:

• In the box that says “Port:” type 2000.
• Now, close the Preferences window. Mail will ask you if you want to save, and you must click Yes.

Viewing Mail

Now that we’re done setting everything up, you should be able to check your Hotmail account. If you press the button to Get Mail, Mail will ask you for your Hotmail password. Enter it (and click to save your password, if you desire). If everything goes smoothly, this is what you should get:

Make MacFreePOPs Start at Login

The last thing we need to do is make MacFreePOPs start up when you log in. If the program isn’t running, Mail will not be able to retrieve your Hotmail, so this is important. Back over in MacFreePOPs:

• Click on the “MacFreePops” tab, and put check marks next to the 1st, 2nd, and last preferences. It should look like this:
  
  
• Now quit the program and open it again.
• This theoretically will cause MacFreePOPs to start the necessary service and quit, so that you never see it, but I’ve found it won’t quit on it’s own (though the service does start). For me, having to quit the program each time I restart is no big deal, since my machine stays up for days or weeks at a time.
• Lastly, we need to Open System Preferences.
  
• Click Accounts.
  
• Highlight your account and click the Login Items tab.
• Now, click the + button, navigate to your Applications folder, and select MacFreePOPs. This will cause it to open when you log in. Here’s my window to show you:
  

We are done! Hopefully you’ve been able to follow this setup, and it is working for you. But is it? Did you need to do anything differently? Have thoughts about this whole process? Post your thoughts in the comments.

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Tagged as: apple, Email, mac