Use Hotmail Sign in Bing to login to Windows Live
Since Windows Live Hotmail belongs like Microsoft, you will often find special integration between products made by Microsoft and your Hotmail account - one such example is the Outlook Connector for the Office Suite, which allows you to check your Hotmail emails from Microsoft Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010, just like you do in the Windows Live Mail program. Another such integration is found through Bing, Microsoft's search engine. In this tutorial, we will show you how to use Hotmail Sign in Bing to login to Windows Live.
Sign in to Hotmail accounts through Microsoft's Bing search engine
This is how you can sign in to your Hotmail account using Microsoft Bing:
- First, open your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox...), type "www.bing.com" inside the address bar, and hit Enter on your keyboard (or click on the "Go" arrow button).
- As soon as you do, the Bing homepage will appear, and one of two scenario will play out: if you are already logged in to your Windows Live / Hotmail account, you will see something like this in the top right corner of the page, and the word "Connected":
- Notice from the screenshot above that Bing shows both the Windows Live icon, and the Facebook logo: this is because Bing lets you sign in to Windows Live and Hotmail, or Facebook to customize your search experience and settings. This tutorial focuses on Hotmail, but check out Facebook Login Sign in instead, where we focus solely on the social networking site.
- If you are not already signed in to your Windows Live Hotmail account, Bing will show a "Sign in" link instead, which is actually a dropdown menu: (compare with screenshot above)
- To login to your Hotmail account from Bing, just click on the "Sign in" link, and choose "Sign in with Windows Live" from the dropdown menu (again, you can login using your Facebook user name and password, but we'll just stick to Windows Live in this tutorial).
- Your web browser will then redirect you to the standard Hotmail Sign in page: but notice that instead of the usual "Windows Live" logo on the left, you now see the Bing logo. You should never login to your Hotmail account from a page that doesn't look "right", but Bing belongs to Microsoft, just like Windows Live and Hotmail, so you can safely proceed:
- And that's all it takes to sign in to Hotmail from Bing! As an added bonus, you can now access your emails just by clicking on the "Hotmail" link in the top left corner of the page:
Tip: while the sign in screen looks a bit different than the one you get when you access your emails by typing "live.com" or "hotmail.com" in your web browser's address bar, everything else works exactly the same way; if you are new to Windows Live, see "Hotmail Sign in" for help. (If you feel more comfortable using the regular method, just sign in to your Hotmail account, and -assuming you have chosen to automatically sign in to Hotmail- Bing will right away "detect" you.
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.