Using Hotmail Plus Addresses ~ Security Garden

The improvements in Windows Live Hotmail over the years have made it my preference over Gmail and Yahoo! for managing my e-mail. One little-known feature is the ability to create plus addresses.

Plus addresses provide a simple way to sort, delete or move e-mail messages to specific folders. .

How to Create a Plus Address

Creating a plus address is as simple as adding a plus sign (+) then a word to your Hotmail address. To create an address specifically for those occasions you register for a newsletter, simply add +newsletter to your address.

For example, if your e-mail address is spring123@live.com, to create a newsletter plus address, you would use spring123+newsletter@live.com when registering for newsletters.

How to use a plus address

From your Hotmail inbox, search for email messages sent to the plus address. From the results, you can delete or move all of the messages to a separate folder.

Easily search for messages related to the plus address that you created. After typing the plus address in the search box, select the option to sort by "to".
The next step is to create a rule to automatically manage the newsletters.
1. From your Hotmail inbox, click Options, and then click More options.
2. Under Customizing Hotmail, click Rules for sorting new messages, and click New.
3. In this example, a rule is created so all new messages addressed to spring123+newsletter@live.com will be moved to the Newsletter folder.

Although Gmail allows the use of plus addresses, it lacks the flexibility of Hotmail. The label feature of Gmail merely provides a way of identifying similarly labeled mail, leaving your inbox cluttered. Yahoo! does not offer plus addresses.

Additional Topics on Managing Your Hotmail

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May the wind sing to you and the sun rise in your heart...

Thursday, May 12, 2011