Gmail is arguably a far stronger and faster email service than Hotmail. Many people started off with Hotmail accounts more than a decade ago, and have now ended up also having a Gmail account. If you are now using Gmail as your primary email account, Microsoft makes it difficult for you to forward emails from your Hotmail to your Gmail account.


In Hotmail (or its new name Windows Live Hotmail) the Forwarding option states the following:

“You can forward your mail to one other e-mail address that ends in hotmail.com, msn.com, live.com, or is part of Windows Live Custom Domains.”. Well, that’s no good! We want to forward it to Gmail!

What to do? There is a simple solution!

1. Login to Gmail and click on “Settings” (top right hand corner)

2. Click on “Forwarding and POP/IMAP”

3. Under IMAP access, click on Enable IMAP. Save Changes

4. Click on “Accounts and Import” in the Settings Menu Bar

5. Click on “Add POP3 email account”

6. Enter your Hotmail email address then click Next Step

7. Enter your Hotmail password and adjust the options if necessary. For example, you may wish to leave a copy of retrieved messages in the server

8. Click on Add Account

9. Voila!! Your mail account has been added!

10. You can then choose if you wish to be able to send mail as your hotmail account. Yes gives you more flexibility. Click on Next Step

11. You are then asked to “Enter information about your other email address”. Change the options if required, then click on Next Step

12. Click on Send Verification

13. Log in to your Hotmail account and get the verification email. Enter the verification code and click on Verify

14. You are done!

15. Try sending an email to your hotmail account. It should arrive in your Gmail account!

Getting Hotmail emails into your Outlook Account

Its very easy to put a Gmail account into your Microsoft Outlook, so that the emails can be received onto your computer automatically and then read offline if need be. This is not so easy to do with Hotmail, and it does not automatically move your Hotmail emails onto your computer, forcing you to do it manually. So with the emails landing in Gmail you will be able to seamlessly receive all your emails into your Outlook!

Correctly Setting Your Junk Mail Option in Hotmail

Gmail does not accept forwarded emails from Hotmail if they are in the Junk folder. To avoid missing an important email, simply go to your Hotmail account, then Options (top right), More Options, Junk email, Filters and reporting and set the junk email filter level to Low (see below). This means that most junk mail will end up in your Gmail, and Gmail will then use its own junk mail processing.

Were you able to forward Hotmail to Gmail using the above technique?

We would appreciate feedback or any questions you may have about this procedure. Please fill in the comments form at the bottom of this page.