Integrate Hotmail with Gmail

I changed my primary email account from Hotmail (actually, Mailshell, which was pulling messages from Hotmail) to Gmail in 2005. I love my Gmail and haven't looked back once. I kept my Hotmail account active for various reasons and check it sporadically. Until recently, that was once every 6 or 7 months.

Recently I have had cause to check it more frequently (good thing - I discovered US Airways reposessed 18,000 FF miles -- grrrr). It may be a minor effort, but I find logging into additional email accounts each day to be time consuming and inconvenient. What I really wanted was to somehow get my messages from Hotmail to Gmail without having to do any work.

I found a solution with a quick Google and some tweaks in my Gmail account. I am sharing it here because I know more than one of you has migrated from Hotmail to Gmail (or is thinking about it) and are in the same boat. The solution has two parts.

Part One
Register for an IzyMail account. But, wait!!! This is important!!! When you sign up, provide the information for your Hotmail account. IzyMail will ask you for your login info (username and Hotmail password) and a confirmation code. Now, go into Gmail and click "Settings." Next click on the "Accounts tab". Find the section "Get mail from other accounts" and click the to "Add a mail account you own." Follow the instructions and screen shots at http://v3.izymail.com/gmailconfig.aspx for step-by-step instructions for what to do next.

Part Two
This step may not be strictly necessary, depending on your needs. Not only do I want to check my Hotmail account, I also want to reply to messages sent to the Hotmail account using my Hotmail email address. For all intents and purposes, I want the recipient to believe I am emailing from the address they have, Hotmail. To do this, go back into the Gmail Settings. Click the "Accounts" tab and locate the "Send mail as" section. Choose the radio button that says "Reply from the same address the message was sent to." Next, click "Add another email address you own." You will be prompted to enter your name and the email address. Enter the entire Hotmail address here. Click "Next step." Gmail will send a message to your Hotmail account to verify it, and you'll have to click the link inside of the message to complete the process.

So, now your email gets automatically sucked out of Hotmail and into Gmail. Any time you reply, it will look like you are replying from Hotmail. Easy-peasy!

** A couple of notes...
*If your recipient receives mail via Outlook, they will not be fooled. Outlook detects that you are sending from your account on behalf of another. It shows something like this:
tlhorgan@gmail.com; on behalf of; Tracy Horgan [tlhorgan@hotmail.com]
*Also IzyMail will fetch mail from Yahoo and AOL, too.