Oh boy: Go figure out THIS occurrence (Hotmail vs. macmail).

This is a really strange happening! My son (2 MONTHS ago) finally set up my hotmail accn't to be added to my more "personal use" email accn't in my macmail pgm. It's so convenient to now be able to access both accounts in one location! Plus, my Hotmail accn't NOW receives all the pics embedded in the email (i.e., they're totally visible) whereas before I often would have to either hit "reply" or "forward" in order to see them when accessing through hotmail.com. After 3-4 wks. of no probs, the Hotmail accn't emails (in macmail) suddenly stopped coming in. And on my macmail page I could see that the Hotmail word was grayed out. I even knew enough to check the preferences and they seemed to be fine and correct for both accounts. So, son is not able to come for awhile and I had to revert back to viewing my Hotmail emails through their .com. Today, 3 wks. after they stopped, they suddenly started loading up again in my macmail pgm. - and it started loading in from the date 3 weeks earlier when they had stopped. And, of course, the "Hotmail" wording was no longer grayed out again. WHAT the heck is that about? I really don't want it to happen again and I know *I* didn't do anything to make them start reappearing OR disappearing. What could be the explanation?

What could be the explanation?

Click to expand...

Just a guess, but it could be on the Microsoft end. I haven't used my Hotmail account for ages since I switched to GMail. Much more reliable.

It's Hotmail. It's a Microsoft product. That's about all you need to know when you're trying to figure out where the problem might be.

But seriously, I agree with chscag, Gmail offers a much more robust service for the same price (i.e. free) and it's dead reliable. It also integrates nicely with Apple Mail. Particularly if you use their IMAP service.

A whole bunch of us with our first Macs from 3-4 years ago have moved to gmail. I gave up a 10 yr old email address and it took about a year to get everyone moved to my gmail address.

MS has been seesawing back and forth for years now - allowing, then not allowing the free hotmail accounts to work with any mail software. They want everyone to pay for their "Live" account.

I may be in the minority here, but I just use the web-based mail software. I linked up my main Yahoo account to the Mail program on my iPod Touch. Sometimes it works, sometimes, it just sits there loading all the time.

They want you to use their software, so you have to load up the ads too. That's what keeps them afloat.

I should really give up my old Yahoo account anyway, because it is just loaded with spam due to too few characters in my userID. But as bobtomay pointed out, it is hard to get everyone transferred over.

I have Yahoo, AOL, Live/MSN and GMail. I also have my student Live account from my school. What have I noticed?

Live/MSN/Hotmail have the occasional glitch of which the server will reject your password a few times before it suddenly realizes that it really is your password.

AOL has had some glitches as well- notably that their outbox servers will block you in Mail, Thunderbird or Outlook. I've only had this happen once.

My school address has had problems- but those problems stemmed from the schools' servers.

GMail is liquid smooth.

And Yahoo requires you to cough up $20 a month (or something like that) to use their service in Mail. Strangely, that's not the case on the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad.

Why I have so many email addresses:

I run a small forum, used one email address for professional things, another for collecting spam, another for use in case I decided to delete another email address, and one that my aunt created for me several years ago. In that order:

-Live
-Yahoo
-GMail
-AOL
-MSN


And AOL came under some lawsuit a couple years back and I opted out of that. But now I'm afraid to delete my account there- and the fact that I have some things registered with that account as the email address. Not that I really need those registered things- the lawsuit thing is what scares me.

On a side note- my MSN and my Yahoo email address are the same. So most everybody knows both email addresses and can contact me via either one. I loved Yahoo's services five years ago- today, not so much.