This is my challenge: Hotmail
This is my challenge; being 100% Microsoft; and Hotmail has been my next adoption after Windows Phone 7. Have been two great weeks living with Microsoft’s new OS and discovering all new possibilities; including all Windows Live features.
I decided to use my recently created Windows Live ID account and my existing 6 year-old Google Mail account, so I setup both on my phone. I should recognize that there is no difference, in terms of integration, between both in Windows Phone 7; so it works great with both mail services.
I used two different strategies to migrate all my stuff from one service to the other. So, for contacts and mail I used TrueSwitch, a free-for-partners (Google and Microsoft are considered partners) online service that can migrate mail, calendar and contacts between service providers; but for my calendar I decided to explore a more old-fashioned way… the export and import process.
To start testing the TrueSwitch service, I decided to use just my contacts instead of risking all my stuff. Once Google Mail contacts synchronization on my phone was deactivated and I ran the migration page, filled up all required fields and selected only my address book (actually the contacts)… It took me five minutes to have all my contacts migrated to my Hotmail account, and another couple to got them on my phone. All information was transferred correctly; so, first test completed successfully.
After seeing that all was transferred correctly I moved over my mail. It took some hours (I had more than 5.000 e-mails), but afterwards all was transferred correctly maintaining the folders structure. Just one little inconvenient; Google Mail combines all mail into one single folder called All Mail to be able to show e-mails as conversations. Hotmail, keeps items separated between inbox and sent because it doesn’t combine mails to show them as conversations. That forced me to manually relocate sent and received items into the corresponding folders.
Just after relocating my e-mail I added the forwarding to Google’s mail in order to receive a copy of all e-mails during the migration process. How?
- Go to Mail on Google Mail.
- Click Settings at the top left part of the window.
- Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
- Click Add a forwarding e-mail address and add the new one.
- Click on Forward a copy of incoming mail to and select the newly added address.
- Click Save Changes.
For some reason I was not able to transfer my calendar using TrueSwitch so I did it manually, exporting from Google Mail and importing into Hotmail using a iCalendar (.ics) formatted file. How?
- Go to Calendar on Google Mail.
- Click Settings under your calendar or under all calendars.
- Under the Calendar tab on the Calendar Settings page click Export Calendars.
- Open the ZIP file and extract your iCalendar file, save it somewhere.
- Go to Calendar on Hotmail.
- Click Subscribe.
- Select Import from an ICS file, click Choose File and Import into an existing calendar.
- Select your calendar.and click Import calendar.
That worked like a charm, and again after a couple of minutes all my calendar entries were on my phone, well synchronized.
The most difficult part has been getting my Hotmail account upgraded to Hotmail Plus. For some reason the billing page establishes your country by reading your computer regional settings, and If you (like me) have the location set to United States for application compatibility purposes you will not be able to pay with your country credit card and upgrade your account. To avoid problems, just simply change the location field in your Regional Settings to match your real country (in my case Spain), and then purchase the upgrade normally.
How? (Windows 7)
- Go to Control Panel in your computer.
- Click on Region and Language.
- Click on Location tab.
- Change Current location field to match you real country.
- Restart Internet Explorer.
Afterwards, I let everybody know the new e-mail address sending them an e-mail and activating the Vacation Settings on Google Mail.
One of the most interesting features I’ve discovered with Windows Live is the Messenger Social which lets you connect your account with some of the most important social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace amongst others.
Connecting this, brings you some Extra added value like birthdays, contacts information, etc. that are automatically linked to your information. In example. I use to forget birthdays, but now I have all visible on my calendar thanks to linking Facebook.
Don’t miss my two previous posts of This is my challenge series, 100% Microsoft and Windows Phone 7 to know a little bit more of this little adventure I’m trying to complete.
As usual, thanks for reading and have a nice Easter.