"The email address or password is incorrect. Please try again"
The following error message is one of the most frequent problems you will encounter when you try to login to your Windows Live Hotmail Hotmail account: "The email address or password is incorrect. Please try again." In this tutorial, we will explain what the message means, and what steps you should take to work around this issue, as well as next steps to consider if you consistently get this notice.
I cannot login to Hotmail - Sign in screen says invalid password / email address
This common complaint resonates to a personal level, since we've ourselves experienced it often, fortunately for light reasons (read the end of this tutorial to see if you should start getting worried that your Windows Live Hotmail account has been hacked). Like many things in life, the simplest explanation is often the good one: so let's start examining what this sign in error message means, and how to fix it:
- When you go through Hotmail sign in, the Windows Live servers will check your login information (credentials) against a database of valid Hotmail users. If your email address and your password are both correct, you will be redirected to your inbox. Otherwise, you will receive the error message we discuss on this page.
- Your "user name" is the "Windows Live ID" - or email address. The email address is not case-sensitive, and it does not matter if you capitalize it or not (uppercase/lowercase letters). So, first check, character by character, that the portion of the email address that comes before the "
@" symbol is correct. Just one missing letter/number/underscore will make it a different email address! Also make sure that the email address contains no spaces at all. - Once you've checked the "user name" part of your login email address, check the "domain name" - this is the part of your email address that comes after the "
@" symbol, something like "live.com" or "hotmail.com". Double-check that the domain extension is correct, too: is it "hotmail.com", "hotmail.co.uk", "hotmail.fr"? This also matters, since "john@hotmail.com" and "john@hotmail.co.uk" are two different email addresses! - Now that you have checked your entire email address for typos, let's move on to the password: your Hotmail password is case-sensitive: this means that it considers an uppercase letter to be a different character than the same letter in lowercase ("A" vs. "a"). Start by checking that "CapsLock" is turned off, and that you are typing in all uppercase letters.
- To avoid any involuntary typos, erase everything in doubt, start over from scratch, and use your mouse to click inside each field, (vs. using a keyboard shortcut).
Tip # 1: if you want to double-check your password in plain sight, you can type it inside a text editor of your choice, like Notepad (on Windows), TextEdit (on Mac OS X), or gedit (on Linux). Often, the typo (if any) will pop at you instantly!
Tip # 2: if this problem happens to you often when you login to Hotmail, consider enabling the option that allows you to sign in to Hotmail automatically. This spares you from having to manually type your email address an password every time, and makes typos impossible once you got your credentials right!
If you have reached this point in the tutorial, and can still not login to your Hotmail account and check your emails, and are positive that you have entered your credentials correctly, something may be wrong. An upcoming tutorial will explain how to determine if your Hotmail account has been hacked, and what you should do about it. We'll also give you more pointers to try before reaching that conclusion.
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.