Confirm Hotmail sign out (completely logout)
Depending on your last Hotmail sign in options, you may still be logged into your Windows Live Hotmail account: if you are checking your emails from home, this matters a bit less than if you are using a public computer; nonetheless, if other computer users have to manually sign you out before they can check their own email account, it can get tedious! (Sign in to multiple different Hotmail accounts on the same computer.)
Make sure that you have completely signed out of Hotmail
Follow these steps to check if the Hotmail sign out is finished:
- Open your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) and type www.hotmail.com or www.live.com in the address bar, and hit Enter.
- This will do one of two things: if you see your Hotmail inbox (or anything other than the sign in screen), click on the "sign out" link in the top right corner of the screen to manually logout.
- The second possible case is that typing the Windows Live Hotmail address brought you to the following screen, which displays the Hotmail sign up form on the left, and the sign in form on the right hand side: your user name (email address) and password should both be blank.
- If you see your email address (as on screenshot below), click on the "x" to remove your login information and completely logout of the service ("Don't remember this Windows Live ID").
- As soon as you do that, Hotmail removes your login information, and you are completely signed out! As visual confirmation, you will see two blank fields for user name and password.
To be on the safe side, you can always go back once more to the Windows Live Hotmail homepage to check and confirm that you are in fact permanently logged out. Keep in mind that if you have signed in to your Hotmail account in several web browsers on the computer in question, you will need to manually sign out from your email account in those browsers as well.
Tip: sometimes, after you manually logout of your Hotmail account, you may receive a "Sign-out isn't complete... Finish signing out" error message; it simply means that the Hotmail sign in screen is set to remember your email address and password; the steps above solve the issue, no need to clear your cookies!
New Hotmail, MSN Hotmail, Windows Live Hotmail & Live email are all referring to the same free webmail service offered by Microsoft and Windows Live Team (works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X). Microsoft Corporation, Apple, and other companies own the copyright or trademark to these and other terms mentioned.