Yesterday I ranted about how I disliked the new version of Hotmail, and said I would switch to Gmail. Well it was far easier than I thought.
You can easily import all your Hotmail messages into a Gmail account using Google’s own built in import feature. And it will continue to poll your Hotmail account for 30 days, giving you time to instruct people and services to switch to sending you mail to your Gmail account.
And Hotmail now has a feature where you can forward email to another address, and it doesn’t have to be a Hotmail account. I remember when Microsoft wouldn’t allow this, and there was no forward feature in Hotmail. Well there is now, so old mail can be forwarded to your Gmail account till you are ready to abandon your Hotmail account permanently.
Sign up and log into your Gmail account. Click “Settings” in the top right hand corner. Then click “Accounts and Import”. Click the button named “Import from another address” and follow the instructions. It will warn you that it could take from 2 hours to 2 days to complete the import. I would expect this is based on your Hotmail accounts size and how busy their servers might be. For me, some mail showed up in a couple of hours, and all of it was imported by the next morning with this message at the top of my Gmail screen:
Import complete!
Your contacts and messages from name@hotmail.com have finished importing. New messages will be forwarded as they arrive. Visit the name@hotmail.com label to see your messages.
Now log into your Hotmail account you are importing from. Click on “Options” then “More Options”.
In the section “Customize your mail” go to option “Mobile alerts for new messages” and make sure the option “None. Never send me mobile alerts” is selected. You will never receive any alert sms by setting this option so you will stay free of charges.
Click Save.
In the section “Manage your account” goto “Forward mail to another e-mail account”.
Enter the e-mail address you want your Hotmail to be forwarded to, in our case your Gmail account address.
Click “Save” and confirm the setting by clicking the link in the e-mail that has been sent to your Gmail account. I never did get a confirmation link emailed to me, but others have, so this may vary. Perhaps the import feature confirmed this for me, I’m not sure, but I was surprised to not see one.
That’s basically it, you can now abandon your Hotmail account in favour of your Gmail account. And you will have time to migrate your friends and services that send messages to your “old” hotmail address.