You are here because you want to create a hotmail or live email address account in less than a minute. I am typing fast when compared with a beginner and if you`re a beginner, you will still be able to create your first hotmail or live email address in a couple of minutes. Did you noticed that I keep saying hotmail or live email address ? That`s because I didn`t wanted to create another article which would be identical with this one. Microsoft allows you to create a free email address with hotmail.com or live.com domains. That`s why I am going to reffer at both of them. Keep in mind that when you will create your free hotmail/live account you can also use them as users for MSN Messenger and not only as a free email address. There are a lot of ways to use an email but this is not the purpose of this article. This article was written for those who are interested in creating their first hotmail/live email address. That being said, let`s get started. As I already said, the entire setup process should take you a couple of minutes.
Open the Hotmail/Live page and Sign Up for your free email address
First thing to do. Open your favourite web browser and go to http://www.hotmail.com/ or http://www.live.com/. I checked both of these addresses and they should look the same, no difference between them. Once you`re there, look in the middle of the page for a button called ``Sign Up``, it should be near a blue text called ``Don`t have a Hotmail Account?`` Once you find that button, click on ``Sign Up``. Take a look at this picture as this speaks for itself.
Once you clicked on ``Sign Up`` button, it should redirect you to a page which starts with ``Create your Hotmail account`` - ``This is your Windows Live ID-it gets you into other services like Messenger and SkyDrive. All information is required. Take a look at this picture, this is how it looks at me :
Complete all fields and make sure to save that information
Now, let`s see what you need to do here. Basically, you have to complete all these fields, one by one, until you will finish everything. The first box will ask you to choose a hotmail/live address, you can select from either hotmail/live domains. So, enter your desired email address. If it`s already taken it should say something like that ``xxxxx@hotmail.com isn`t available.`` and it should offer you a couple of suggestions with available ID`s marked with the green colour. If it doesn`t show you all of these click on ``Check availability`` button in order to check if this username is available. If it`s not, you need to try another one.
Right after choosing your username, you need to create a password and retype that password again. The minim character lentgh is 6 charaters and as the password indicator says, make sure to follow his advice: ``Strong passwords contain 7-16 characters, do not include common words or names, and combine uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.`` If you have another email address, enter your alternate email address. This will help you to recover your access to this email if you will forgot your password or anything else.
If you don`t have another email address, don`t worry. You have another option for those like you and all you have to do is to click on ``Or choose a security question for password reset``. This will allow you to choose from a list of popular answers. Just make sure that you will remember this answer since you choosed this method you won`t be able to recover your password in the future ( if you will forget it ) if you don`t know the answer. In my opinion, it`s always better to use the ``Alternate Email Address`` option but if you don`t have another email address, don`t worry, just make sure that you won`t forget the answer so choose an answer that you can`t forget.
We are almost ready, this is the final step. As you can see, now you need to type your first name ( the name and address in this picture are fictious ) and then your last name. You have to choose your country from that drop-down menu. If you`re located in USA you need to select the state, right after that the ZIP code, your gender, male or female and finally your birth year. If you typed and selected everyting, check on more time, take a good look at the re-captcha code and see if you can type it. If you can`t distinguish that code, don`t worry. Take a look at birth year and right under that box, you can read a text that says: ``Enter the characters you see`` and you should see three options: New | Audio | Help. Supposing that you can`t see the current characters, click on New and a new characters should appear, if you can`t see those either, click again on New. You can also choose Audio and you should hear those characters spelled by a voice, just make sure that your volume is properly selected. After you managed to type those characters, the last thing to do is to click on ``I accept`` button.
If everything went well, you should be redirected to a page that allows you to access your Inbox, to send an email, access the calendar, your contacts and the options. The first thing to do is to access your email. In order to that you need to click on ``Go to Inbox (1)`` ( it`s right under Hotmail highlights ). This picture will show you how this page looks, keep in mind that it might look a little different as the ads keeps changing.
The first contact with your email
Here it is, the Hotmail/Live email interface. You`re actually in the Inbox folder of your email address and as you can see, you already received your first email from Hotmail Team, which is by the way, an informative email that tells you more about their free service.
The purpose of this article has been achieved. Once you`re in the Inbox you`ve successfully created your first Hotmail/Live email address and from now on you need to learn how to use properly this email. On the left side, you may notice a column with Folders. Click on each folder, one by one and you may notice that the interface is changing each time, depending on your current location. You can even add a New folder. There are a lot of things to explore at your Hotmail/Live email address so go ahead and take a look, don`t modify things, just look at them and you will already get an ideea about this free email. You will also have to learn how to sign out or sign in hotmail/live email but that`s not the purpose of this article.
Keep in mind that you can always setup a new Hotmail/Live email address, you can create a lot of free email accounts for you, family and friends but if you`re going to use this email as your first email ever, make sure that you can actually remember your secret password and other details that you entered here. That`s because this email will become an important part of your life and if you will loose access, you are going to loose contacts, photos, documents and a lot of other things. When people creates their first email, they don`t get very serious and after a couple of years when they loose access to their email, some of them don`t remember what secret question they used. The ideea is to make sure that you save this information so that you can actually use it when you need it. So, the setup process is piece of cake, learning how to use it it`s also an easy task but recovering your email back could be almost impossible and that`s why I talked about it. I wanted to make sure that you understand everything. When compared with other free email providers, I could only say that Hotmail/Live email accounts are easier and also faster to create. A couple of years ago, I can`t say that I was a fan of their free email service but Microsoft changed a lot of things and I admit that everything has been improved. If you`re interested in other articles regarding Hotmail/Live services, navigate to the Hotmail/Live category or perform a search.