I’m sorry to say that I have come to HATE Hotmail.
There are so many irritating things it does that I want to
write on a really fine alternative for you. Let’s
talk about another Browser Mail site you can use. (Browser
Mail means you go to their site to Read, Reply, etc your email.)
Then I’ll talk about how you can transition from Hotmail
to it. Ok?
GMail. Brought to you by the same wonderful folks that
have the very best Search Site on the internet today - Google.
GMail’s claim to fame is that you never have to delete
any mail. Why? Because they give you over 2GB
(yes, Gigabytes) of space! And it keeps getting larger
(currently, almost 2.5GB). You can create folders and
move email into them to keep organized. It’s easy
to search thru your email to find that one you want.
GMail keeps all your emails together. In other words,
if you have written an email, the person Replies, you Replied,
etc., all those emails are all together so you can see the
entire ‘thread’! There is some nice additional
software available that lets you: be notified when you have
new mail – GMail Notifier (http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/);
and, GMail Drive - let’s you use GMail like it’s
an additional hard drive ( HYPERLINK “http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm”
http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm) -once you install GMail
Drive a new storage device appears in the My Computer folder
on your Windows computer.
But, first you want to move all your old email addresses to
GMail. You must import address books from Hotmail to
your GMail account. It’s not tricky, but it does take
a few steps.
This is the easiest way (particularly if you’re not
a cut-n-paste type):
Open Outlook or Outlook Express and set it up to access your
Hotmail account (if you haven’t done so already). If
you haven’t, make sure that under the E-mail Server
Names you select HTTP for incoming server, and Hotmail for
mail service provider.
In the next window, enter your Hotmail username and password.
Now, you can choose to download your e-mails, or just hit
Cancel. It doesn’t really matter for what we’re
doing.
While still in Outlook or Outlook Express, click on the Addresses
button and go to Tools -> Synchronize Now.
Depending on your connection, this may take a few minutes,
but the Address Book will synchronize itself with your Hotmail
account and download all your contacts! Sweet…now to
import it to GMail.
In Outlook or Outlook Express, go to File -> Export ->
Other Address Book.
When the Address Book Export Tool window comes up, choose
Text File (Comma Separated Values) as this is the format which
GMail uses and click Export.
Here’s a little more complicated way to do it from within
Hotmail, using Internet Explorer:
Sign in to your Hotmail account.
Click the ‘Contacts’ tab.
Click ‘Print view’.
Align the cursor with the first letter of the ‘Name’
column.
Highlight your contacts by holding down the left mouse button
and dragging the cursor down the list.
Press ‘Control + c’ to copy the list.
Open Microsoft Excel (or a similar spreadsheet program that
supports comma separated values (CSV)).
Select cell A1 in Excel (the top-left square).
Press ‘Control + v’ to paste (don’t use
‘Paste Special’).
Choose ‘Save as’ from the ‘File’ menu,
and select the type ‘CSV (Comma delimited).’ Make
a note of where you saved the file.
Ok, now import them into GMail:
Now that you have your contacts exported, log into GMail and
click ‘Contacts’ on the left side of the page.
The Contacts list then opens in a new window.
Click ‘Import Contacts’.
Click ‘Browse’ and locate the CSV file you’d
like to use.
Select the file and click ‘Import Contacts’. After
successfully uploading the document, a dialogue box displays
the number of new entries that were added to your Contacts
list.
There you have it. You’ll love GMail! Want
to know more about Google and what they’re up to? Go
to Google.com and click on ‘more>>’ to read
about Froogle, Alerts, Maps, Answers, Mobile, SMS, Groups,
Earth, Picasa, Talk, Translate, and their Toolbar!
