Managing Formerly Linked Microsoft Accounts

Microsoft announced in June that starting in late July, the linked accounts feature was being eliminated from Outlook.com.  Linked accounts should not be confused with aliases.  

• An alias is an additional email address created within your primary account.  Alias addresses use the same inbox, contact list, and account settings as the primary account. 
• Linked accounts were completely separate e-mail accounts that were linked to your primary account with their own inbox, contact list and account settings.  After being linked, the linked accounts were easily accessible via a drop-down link from your account.

With the account(s) you had previously linked now only accessible by separately logging into those accounts, if you haven't done so yet, you may want to set up mail forwarding. 

Mail Forwarding

Forwarding email to your primary Outlook.com email account is not limited to Hotmail, MSN, Live or Outlook.  You can also send and receive email from Google, Yahoo! Mail Plus, or other services that use POP.

The only caveat for Microsoft services is that it is necessary to sign in to your forwarded account at least once every 365 days to prevent the system from closing the account. 

The basic steps for setting up mail forwarding from one Microsoft account to another are straight-forward:

1. Sign in to the previously linked account that you want to forward to your primary account.
2. Click the Options icon located in the upper-right corner and select "More mail settings".
3. Select "Email forwarding" from the Managing your account column on the left.
4. Select "Forward your mail to another email account".
5. Enter the email address for the main account. 
6. Decide if you want to "Keep a copy of forwarded messages in your Outlook inbox".
7. Click Save.
   
   
   
   
   

Caught in a loop?

In order to set up mail forwarding, you need to log out from your primary account and log in to the secondary account.  What if you discover that typing mail.live.com in the address bar takes you right back to the email account you thought you had just logged out from?  This is because you are not completely logged out of that account, most likely because you checked the box "Keep me signed in".

In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to completely clear all live.com cookies.  If you use a cookie manager program, there are ~5 cookies to be deleted.

The first is the cookie with the name of the mail server; e.g., blu###.mail.live.com, where ### is a letter or number(s).  The other cookies to remove are the following:   

home.live.com
live.com
login.live.com
mail.live.com

To manage cookies in Internet Explorer 10, see Delete and manage cookies in Internet Explorer.  Click the down arrow for IE9 or IE8:

To manage cookies in alternate browsers, see the instructions at the respective sites:

• Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Opera
• Safari

Tip:  An easier way to access your other account is to use an alternate browser that you do not use to log in to your e-mail and it doesn't have the "Keep me signed in" box checked, use that browser to login to your live.com account and set up e-mail forwarding.

Remember when you are able to log in to the e-mail account that you want to manage, don't check the "Keep me signed in" box!

Additional information  on setting up mail forwarding is provided in this Microsoft help document at Set up your Gmail, Yahoo! Plus, or Microsoft email accounts in Outlook.com.

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