Hotmail Feedback

Summary: Complaints, suggestions and ranting about Microsoft's Hotmail e-mail service

Useful forum threads:
* MSN Hotmail account space
* Omar Shahine - Inside Hotmail

Contact backup and export

Don't just allow contact imports from Outlook or Windows Addressbook as you do now but also give us the option to export our contact list to a file right from Hotmail or export them into Outlook. Allow e-mail backup as well to my hard-disk. Everyone says that backups are good! Especially now that 250 MB are or will be provided.

Contact sharing

In the same way that you allow calendar sharing allow selected contacts to be shared amongst Hotmail users as well. Or, allow a simple way to send the details of a contact or group of contacts, like Family, to an e-mail address or to another Hotmail user.

Easy addressbook updating

Give us a way to easily update our contacts with the latest information available about a person. The problem arises when people change their details, like phone number or e-mail, and we never get to know or we find it difficult to update our addressbook, and so information is always out of date. What we need is an automated service in which people will enter their personal data, like phone numbers and e-mails. This service should be linked or integrated with let's say Outlook, so that people will update their personal information easily. Then, allow us to link our Hotmail contacts with this service's database, so that when a contact's details change our addressbook details will also be updated automatically. This service can well be MSN Profile. So give us a way to link our contacts in the Hotmail addressbook with entries in the MSN Profile database.

Extended Storage

"250MB inbox available only in the 50 United States, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Eligible Hotmail users will first receive 25MB at sign-up. Please allow at least 30 days for activation of your 250MB storage to verify your e-mail account and help prevent abuse. Microsoft Corporation reserves the right to provide 250MB inbox to free Hotmail accounts at its discretion."
I don't see the point. Are you asking users from other countries to switch to other providers? -- sanatgersappa

The extended storage is being rolled out across different markets at different times. The US was one of the first markets to get it. Other markets will receive it later -- JonathanHardwick

I'm from India and my Hotmail account still has only 2MB -- krishnakumarhere

Frames

I really dislike the fact that whenever I lick a link in a hotmail message, the web browser window has a hotmail frame around it. In particular, I don't like the fact that the address line of the web page is all messed up. I often want to look at or copy that address, and hotmail makes it virtually impossible. -- Bruce

As a follow up to the issue with Hotmail framing and email links; I have to ask what value does this manipulation of links bring - the only thing I can think of is to ensure users don't think the sites they are visiting are part of Hotmail. The problem with that, as any UI guy will tell you user's don't read. For example my mum clicked through on a link in a message that led to a local school and remarked she was surprised that MSN was supporting/sponsering the organisation - she saw the logo and couldn't be bothered to read the rest. If the frame were to stay I'd expect as a bare minimum to be given the option to break out of the frame and also obtain the true URL of the target page. -- Alex

Howdy. I'm a Program Manager at HotMail. There are a bunch of people who think this, both inside and outside of Microsoft. We'll be making some changes to the way we handle links in the Fall to make this eaiser and less annoying. :-) -- HyperionAB

This change has now happened (no more opening links in framed pages) -- JonathanHardwick

Any chance that there can be a more interactive e-mail creation page like with Outlook Express' Stationary feature? One of the worst problems I have with Microsoft web services (Spaces, Hotmail, MSN), is that I can never make it wide enough for me; I'm always stuck using these dinky little boxes! Plus, a feature like Stationary, which I thought used to exist, could sort of be modelled after the MSN Spaces themes, which users might be sort of familiar with by now. -- ellecue

HTML

Could somebody change the first paragraph tag in the WML version of HotMail's inbox to <p mode="wrap"> please?
The SonyEricsson phones repeat the same mode as the last paragraph tag unless specified otherwise. So when the first line of text is set to <p mode="nowrap"> to make it look nice, every other line in the document will be "nowrap" too. This makes it very difficult to read the first page of text (the phone has no way of controlling the horizontal scrolling of text). -- adwb

Mailing Lists

I hate it that when i send a mail to my mailing list, hotmail prompts me to remove every emailid which is over the limit, one at a time. Couldn't it just give me a message after sending the mail to the rest of the people? -- malani

Integrated S/MIME and PGP support

A big gotcha for server-stored mail is when a vulnerability is found that reveals private messages to unauthorized parties. Add an interface to allow the user to use a plugin to encrypt their email in such a way that only the intended recipient can open it. See http://www.hush.com for such a site, but do it better... if the intended recipient is also a hotmail user, let the sender know at add-to-recipient-list time whether the recipient has a public S/MIME certificate or public PGP key. If not, allow the sender to "invite" the recipient to use the Hotmail wizard to set one up. -- Maurits

Outlook to Hotmail

remove the clickability of the hotmail link to the outlook mailbox frame, having a 404 page is unsightly!

Page Expiration

Another thing that irritates me is that once a page's session expires all the links on that page die, forcing a page refresh so that Hotmail can mess up my links for me! -- Alex

POP3/IMAP4/SMTP support with encryption

GMail supports it. Hotmail is only available via Web browser because MS disabled Outlook protocol.

Exchange support

Allow users to use their hotmail account as an Exchange account via Outlook. All changes to mail, contacts, calendar, etc... are automatically updated. I know there is an Outlook Connector, but it's not the same.

Quicknames Support

When in compose mode, could you show the quicknames of the people in the favorite contacts list on the right (as a tooltip when you hover??)? For that matter, could you show the quicknames in the contacts list (the "front page" of the contacts tab)? -- LagBolt

Random Annoyances

Other things, the 'options' link is pretty hidden over in the corner how about promoting it to a tab? Also while we're talking about tabs; lose the calender tab unless I actually have Calender - it's unecessary clutter - I don't mind you trying to sell me the extended version of Hotmail (the link to get more space beneath the memory usage bar for example) but stuff that messes with the interface in this way is a bad thing (it's something McAfee started doing last year with their Security Centre and it lost them my business at least), besides lets face it a user's only going to click on it once anyway so it isn't the greatest of marketing oppotunities.

So as not to be entirely negative, a couple of good points; The rich text editor is good (quick gripe - no grey in the colour picker!), spell check is nice to have when Word isn't handy, but Hotmail's killer feature for me is Messenger toasts and the integrated Passport sign in. -- Alex

Review Pane

Why not have a review pane that pops down when wanted or have it on the 'Today' page, this info pane would work like on the basis of a brief history of the day. Like the History option in IE where a user can see where they've been the History Pane in Hotmail will show who you have sent new emails too, time sent, description of the subject... I know that sent folders can show this, the little icons next to a reply can also show who has bee nreplied too but some options are restricted to paid accounts and a place where all the info is collated is much beter.

Sent Items

Can we be allowed to save sent items always. It is a nuisance to have to remember to check that box everytime. I have a paid hotmail account and wish I could use my 2GB across all my folders. Not purging this folder every 30 days would be helpful too.
thanks!

Signing out

this should be automatic, like everywhere else, not sent to another page alerting the user that the for some reason, hotmail couldnt close itself out properly, people want to click and walk without double checking to see if a website is doing its job on being secure!

SMS messages

Remember when every other website allowed users the option to send SMS text messages to mobile phones for free online, where are they now. I think this should be an option, also allow for MMS texts too - all for free

Strategy

I know you folks need to make money from Hotmail, but now that Gmail is providing free, secure POP / SMTP access, are you folks going to switch and allow normal access instead of your proprietary HTTP access? For free? I understand you have been able charge for POP access, but it looks like Google is about to eliminate that as an option anyway.

What I thin is more interesting is that Google as become the leader in email very quickly, at least as far as mind share. Hotmail, the original innovator, seems stuck as just responding, and very slowly. It isn't just Hotmail, but the entire email / browser area. The number 1 and 2 activities people do online are still email and search. They use the browser heavily in all of these activities. Outlook Express has been the ugly, red haired step child and Mozilla now has it in its sights, and no word from Microsoft. Firefox is a superior browser. It took it a long time, but it is now better and Microsoft still doesn't respond by updating CSS support, adding tabs, supporting mouse gestures, etc.

The Internet is still important to most of us, but Microsoft seems to have stopped focusing on providing the best Internet tools and services. -- pcause

View Emails By Contacts

Any chance of a button on the contacts page which says "View emails to and from this contact", or to that effect? And possibly a smaller "Active Contacts" section under the "Folders" to quickly see a list of emails from recent people who emailed you? -- DougBTX

Miscellaneous

I saw someone using the address 'name@nospam.hotmail.com.' What's that about?

- It means that person was name@hotmail.com but added the "nospam." bit to stop his address being harvested by spammers. To send him emails, simply remove the "nospam." bit