Re: Using Outlook express to download Hotmail
smax013 . When you open your email from Out look, you actually download them to your HDD so you can keep them...regardless what happen to your real email box. For the purpose of business I like to keep my owe emails so I can organize and move them anywhere I want.
Actually, how Outlook deal with the messages is HIGHLY a function of the type of email account. You are correct,
IF you talk about a POP email account...Outlook will download the message to your local computer...and if you have Outlook setup in a particular way, it will also leave it on the email server. IMAP is a different ball of wax. By default, Outlook does NOT download messages to the local computer...you MUST have an Internet connection up and running to be able to access the emails on the server...BUT you can set Outlook maintain the messages for "offline" use.
Hotmail was a weird bird. If you did a paid account, then you could get POP access. But, the free accounts would ONLY have web access. BUT, Micro$oft made Outlook (and I believe Outlook Express) so that it could access a free Hotmail account. It was in essence acting as the web browser, but was basically functioning just like the web browser. In otherwords, the messages did NOT download to the local computer, but remained on the email server...just like when you would access the account through IE or Firefox...except you were using Outlook to do it. Trust me...I had my cousin's email setup this way as an effort to get Outlook to behave as you says it does...it did NOT for a free Hotmail account. To download email from Hotmail, you had to have a paid account which gave you POP access.
That was a while ago. I will admit that I don't know if Micro$oft still does something similar or if they have changed the rules.
[soapbox] Backup good...no backup bad!! [/soap box]
