How to migrate from a Hotmail account

Question

Is there an easy way to move from a Hotmail account to something else, like a Gmail account or a new Hotmail account? Without losing all the folders, emails, contacts, etc.

Answer 1

You can use Windows Live Mail to download all your Hotmail messages, and then copy them over to your Gmail account. (Instructions here) You don't need Outlook.

Note that you'll have to have IMAP enabled on Gmail in order to use this method.

Answer 2

Transfer your contacts

1. Export your contact information per the instructions on Hotmail.
2. Log into Gmail.
3. Click on "Contacts" in the left hand sidebar.
4. Select "Import Contacts" from the options.
5. Select the file on your Desktop using "Browse". It will import all your contacts.
6. Email all of your contacts and tell them your new address.
   1. If you're signed up to any newsletters, you'll either have to check back to your hotmail account and click a link to change your e-mail address or just unsubscribe and subscribe again with your new e-mail address.

Transfer your messages

1. Send important e-mails you want to keep to your new address.
2. Bulk transfer of all your current and future email is made easy with IzyMail
3. Gmail now supports IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) so you can now transfer all your messages to gmail and maintain all the original header information such as date and sender etc. The following process works for Both free and premium hotmail accounts and ONLY with outlook 2003 or 2007. Microsoft does not allow hotmail connections to other mail clients.

Simply follow the following steps:

1. Enable Imap in your Gmail account under Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > Enable IMAP > Save Settings
2. Connect to your windows live hotmail account with outlook 2003 or 2007 by downloading the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector for Windows Live Hotmail. This is available at the following link: Use a Windows Live Hotmail account in Outlook You MUST have office 2003 or 2007, Outlook express will no longer connect to hotmail accounts and you must pass windows genuine software tests to download the plugin. the plugin acts like a kind of proprietary IMAP connection for Hotmail accounts only. All the steps to do this are available at the same link as above.
3. Connect your gmail account in the same Outlook client using the IMAP connection. Gmail's 4. help files can be located at the following links Outlook 2003 Outlook 2007
4. Drag your messages from your hotmail account over to your gmail account, once you have both connections in Outlook. You can drag entire folders to the Gmail account's root and 6. Outlook will automatically create new labels in gmail and add those labels to the messages in the folder. Gmail labels continue to be displayed as folders in outlook. folder names cannot have slashes (/, ) in them as Gmail uses these to denote label heirarchy rename your folders before dragging them to avoid mid transfer errors.

Courtesy of Wikihow.

Answer 3

GMail has recently updated the import settings when pulling from another account to include contacts and mail messages. The steps provided by Google GMail Help are found here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=117173

This may not be as complete a solution as scoopdreams provides but is an option for basic migration.