Life after Office Live – Email

With the termination of Office Live Small Business, the many users either migrated to Office365 or had to strike out on their own. OLSB offered websites and custom email accounts to small businesses. Email accounts provided Windows Live IDs and the individual users accessed them through Hotmail.

The Office365 service provides all these features and much more, but with the increased service also comes an increase in price. For many small users it is more economical to use an independent web hosting service that also provides email accounts. This preserves the domain name of the business, including the email addresses, but there are some complications.

Users who had been used the Hotmail interface and features now might find the hosting company’s online email system different and strange. If you miss the way Hotmail worked there is good news for you!

Although with the closure of OFSB the email service is gone, the established Windows Live accounts, now called Microsoft accounts, still exist and function, albeit without being able to receive email. So SkyDrive is still there, the old ID still works. (Users logging in after the change are asked to change their passwords and update their account information.)

With another entity now providing email to the former myname@mycompany.com address, the same Windows Live ID still works and looks like it should work. It cannot receive the email – it goes to the new providers mail server, not to the former “live.com” servers – however, it can be made to work. Here is how:

Log in to your Live account, go to the Mail page. Move the pointer to Inbox in the navigation pane. A small gear icon appears. Click it. In the new little menu click Get email from another account.

The next page will look something like this:

Click on Add an email account. The next page will provide a couple of text entry boxes, but instead of starting with these, click on Advanced options.

This opens additional fields. Fill in the information. Yes, this will be exactly the same email address as the account already shows, but it is now provided by your new hosting company. So be sure to show your address and your name just the way it was set up with the new provider. Also be sure to enter the correct name for the Incoming mail server. Your new provider will have supplied this information.

Click Next and on the next page click on the radio button in front of “An existing folder – Inbox”.

Shortly you will get the confirming message “Great We’ll start getting your messages now.”

There is one more step. Log in to your email account of the new mail service provider. In your inbox there, you will find a message from Microsoft (check junk folder if it is not there). This provides a confirmation URL so you can confirm to Microsoft that you own that email address. Click the URL, it will open a page and tell you that the confirmation was received.

Now all is well. You can use your Microsoft account just as you did in the past, your mail will show up and you can continue to use Hotmail to receive and send messages. Only occasionally do you need to log in to your mail service provider’s email system to do some maintenance chores.

.:.