Windows Live Mail (formerly named Windows Live Mail Desktop, code-named Elroy) is a discontinued

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

email client An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email. A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...

from

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. It was the successor to

Windows Mail Mail (later Microsoft Outlook) is a discontinued email client developed by Microsoft and included in Windows Vista and later versions of Windows. It was available as the successor to Outlook Express, which was either included with, or released f ...

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

, which was the successor to

Outlook Express Outlook Express, formerly known as Microsoft Internet Mail and News, is a discontinued email and news client included with Internet Explorer versions 3.0 to 6.0. As such, it was bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from Windows ...

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

and

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the second operating system in the 9x line, as the successor to Windows 95. It was Software ...

. Windows Live Mail is designed to run on

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

and

Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2, codenamed "Windows Server 7" or "Windows Server 2008 Release 2", is the eighth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It was release ...

, but is also compatible with

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...

and

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

, even though Microsoft bundles a new email client, named

, with the latter. In addition to email, Windows Live Mail also features a calendar, an RSS feed reader, and a Usenet newsreader. Windows Live Mail moved away from the older Microsoft mail programs, such as Outlook Express, which stored all e-mails comprising a folder (such as the Inbox) in a single .dbx file. In order to provide greater flexibility (and to avoid the problem where corruption of a single .dbx file could delete multiple emails), Windows Live Mail stores each email message as a separate .eml file. Only the folder structure is maintained in a single database file, using the ESE (Extensible Storage Engine) database structure, named Mail.MSMessageStore (which also holds some metadata for each .eml file on the system, so can be a huge file). The program also maintains a backup copy of that file, in the Backup sub-folder, so problems are rare. At a pinch, the Mail.MSMessageStore file can be recreated from the data in the .eml files.

History

Version 12 (Wave 2)

The first version of Windows Live Mail was released on 6 November 2007. The Windows Live Mail version numbering starts at 12 because this application is an advancement of Windows Mail, not an entirely new application. Windows Live Mail is developed by the same team that wrote Windows Mail. Windows Live Mail has all of the features of Windows Mail. It also adds the following new features: * Support for Web-based email accounts including

Hotmail Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. It also provides a webmail interface accessible via web browser or mobile apps featuring mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and ...

Gmail Gmail is the email service provided by Google. it had 1.5 billion active user (computing), users worldwide, making it the largest email service in the world. It also provides a webmail interface, accessible through a web browser, and is also ...

, and

Yahoo! Mail ! Mail (also written as Yahoo Mail) is an email service offered by the American company Yahoo, Inc. The service is free for personal use, with an optional monthly fee for additional features. Business email was previously available with the Yah ...

Plus. * A different user interface which matches the other Windows Live "Wave 2" applications. * Synchronization with

Windows Live Contacts Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. It also provides a webmail interface accessible via web browser or mobile apps featuring mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and ...

. * Support for

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many ...

feeds. Notable features include the ability to reply directly via email to the author of an item that appears in an RSS feed, and the ability to aggregate multiple feeds into a single folder. The RSS functionality requires

Internet Explorer 7 Windows Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) (codenamed Rincon) is a version of Internet Explorer, a web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on October 18, 2006. It was the first major update to the browser since 2001. It does not support ve ...

or newer. * Multi-line message lists. *

Emoticon An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for emotion icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and Alphabet, letters—to express a person's feelings, mood ...

s can be used in emails and other functions. * In-line spell checking. * Separate inbox folders for different POP accounts. * Support for sending picture files in emails through the ''Photo email'' feature, which uploads pictures to a web-based service and sends the URL and thumbnails in the mail. It can also perform basic photo correction and apply different border effects to pictures.

Comparison with Windows Mail

While Windows Live Mail is the successor to

Windows Mail (Vista) Mail (later Microsoft Outlook) is a discontinued email client developed by Microsoft and included in Windows Vista and later versions of Windows. It was available as the successor to Outlook Express, which was either included with, or released f ...

, there were several differences in functionality between Windows Live Mail and Windows Mail when it was released in 2007. These include: * Ability to view and edit HTML email by source has been removed in Windows Live Mail * Ability to set margins has been removed * Scripted Stationery for Windows Live Mail 2011 is available from Cloudeight Stationery * Locally installed help documentation is not available for Windows Live Mail * Support for using different mailboxes with separate folders (inbox, junk and so on) was added in Windows Live Mail * Support for DeltaSync, a proprietary protocol for access to Windows Live Hotmail email accounts, was added in Windows Live Mail * Support for

WebDAV WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for conc ...

, a HTTP-based protocol (web-based email accounts), developed for Outlook Express, was added in Windows Live Mail * Ability to perform a full-text index-based search in Windows Live Mail if

Windows Search Windows Search (formerly MSN Desktop Search, Windows Desktop Search, and the Windows Search Engine) is a content index and desktop search platform by Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista as a replacement for the previous Indexing Service of Wind ...

is installed

Version 2009 (Wave 3)

A beta version of Windows Live Mail was released in September 2008. It features a new user interface which, like the other Windows Live "Wave 3" beta applications released at the same time, has no icons on the toolbar buttons. It also features a new calendaring function; calendar events automatically synchronize between Windows Live Mail and the Web-based Windows Live Calendar. A "beta refresh" version of Windows Live Mail was released on 15 December 2008, and this version was officially released as the final version on 8 January 2009. This was the last version to support Windows XP. Version 2009 still contains the same MIME problem with signed mail that

has.

Version 2011 (Wave 4)

The first beta became available on 24 June 2010, sporting ribbons in the user interface and a calendar pane. The second beta came with a new start-up screen and other minor updates. The final version of Windows Live Mail 2011 was released on 30 September 2010, along with the Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite. It requires Windows Vista or newer; Windows XP is no longer supported.

Version 2012 (Wave 5)

On 7 August 2012, Microsoft released a new version of

Windows Essentials Windows Essentials (formerly Windows Live Essentials and Windows Live Installer) is a discontinued suite of Microsoft freeware applications that includes email, instant messaging, photo sharing, blogging, and parental control software. ''Essenti ...

2012, which included Windows Live Mail 2012. It requires Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8, or Windows 10. Windows Vista is no longer supported. There are no significant differences from Windows Live Mail 2011, save the discontinuance of support for Vista and DeltaSync. The only technical difference is the replacement in Windows Live Mail 2012 of DeltaSync by Exchange ActiveSync. User forums report significant problems with the upgrade software, KB3093594, so it is recommended not to attempt to upgrade from Windows Live Mail 2011, and there are no benefits in doing so, as both versions are identical, unless the user wishes to use Exchange ActiveSync. But by switching from Deltasync to IMAP, Windows Live Mail 2011 continues to work, without needing either Windows Live Mail 2012 or the upgrade.

Issues reported

Since around 2013, serious problems with Windows Live Mail 2012 (but not with Windows Live Mail 2011) have been reported on various blog sites (including Microsoft forums). One problem is that deleted emails keep returning day after day. Another development that caused complaints is the Live Mail Sent folder erroneously containing the name of the Sender rather than the Recipient in the To column, while omitting the sender's account name in the Account column (as the fault only affects that folder, a workaround is to move sent items into a new folder, named - for example - "Sent 2019"). Discussions on the forums have provided no clear solutions to these issues.

Replacement

Microsoft announced that

Outlook.com Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. It also provides a webmail interface accessible via web browser or mobile apps featuring mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and ...

was discontinuing support for Windows Live Mail during 2016 by discontinuing use of the DeltaSync protocol. Microsoft has positioned the

Mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

app (bundled with

, available in the

Microsoft Store The Microsoft Store (formerly known as the Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It was created as an app store for Windows 8 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With ...

) as a replacement for it. Although use of DeltaSync has been discontinued on Microsoft's servers since 30 June 2016, Windows Live Mail 2011 and 2012 continue to work with Hotmail e-mail accounts by using IMAP (or, less effectively, POP3) instead of DeltaSync.

and other service providers still support DeltaSync, so users can still use Windows Live Mail 2011 - connecting with DeltaSync - with non-Microsoft email accounts (but not Windows Live Mail 2012, as DeltaSync support was removed from it). Additionally, Windows Live Mail 2011 and 2012 continue to function with all non-Microsoft e-mail services, by using IMAP (or, less effectively, POP3) instead of DeltaSync. Windows Essentials 2012, including Windows Live Mail 2012, reached end of support on 10 January 2017, and is no longer available for download from Microsoft; but most of the software bundled in it or in Windows Essentials 2011, including Windows Live Mail, continues to function and it can still be downloaded from Archive.org. The 2011 version is also still available.Go t
Windows Live Essentials Help Center
click on "Installer file links for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008", and choose a language.

References

{{Aggregators

Windows email clients Microsoft email software Windows-only freeware Discontinued Microsoft software Products and services discontinued in 2017