Adding Accounts to the Mail App

Mail is a basic e-mail app that lets you send and receive messages for your various online accounts. At the time of this writing, the app supports Windows Live/Hotmail, Outlook, and Google. It also support IMAP for incoming mail. Microsoft may provide support for more accounts, such as POP3, in the final release of Windows 8. If you have accounts at multiple services, you can set up access to all of them and then choose the account you want to use after launching Mail. If you log in with a Microsoft account, then you may already have access to Windows Live/Hotmail by default, but you do have to manually add your other e-mail accounts. This task explains how to set up Mail with your various online accounts.

1 Log in: Log in with your Microsoft account.

2 Open Mail: Open the Mail app from its Start screen tile.

3 View existing mail: You should already see e-mail from your Live account if you logged in with your Microsoft account.

4 Open Settings charm: Move your mouse to the lower-right hot corner to display the Charms bar. Click the Settings charm.

5 Open accounts: In the Settings pane, click Accounts.

6 Add an account: From the Accounts bar, click the Add an account link.

tip The Mail, People, and Calendar apps are connected, so if you add an account in one, it is automatically added to the other two.

7 Add new account: A list of e-mail services appears, including Hotmail, Outlook, Google, and an option for other accounts. This example uses Google. If you have a Google (Gmail) account, click the entry for Google.

8 Add your Google account: Type the e-mail address and password for your Google account. You can also select the option to include your Google contacts and calendars. Click Connect.

9 View your Google account: Your Google (Gmail) messages appear.

10 View all your mailboxes: Click the back button in front of Gmail Inbox to move back to a view of all your mailboxes. Click the folder for Live to see the e-mail for your Live account.

tip At the time of this writing, Microsoft plans to to phase out Hotmail in favor of Outlook.com.

tip You can add an IMAP account by choosing the Other Account option in the Add an account pane.

tip At the time of this writing, Mail does not support POP3 accounts.