How To: Set up Hotmail in Mutt

I like to think of Microsoft's email infrastructure as a bad bowl of spaghetti. Ever since they came out with outlook, live, and hotmail, doing anything with the server configuration is a pain. When using thunderbird, which configures your mail for you automatically, it's fine, but with a program like mutt things get a bit harder. This is how to set up hotmail and mutt.

The important parts of any mutt configuration file are imap_user, imap_pass, smtp_url, smtp_pass, from, and realname. Here is what that section of the file should look like for you:

 set imap_user = "YOUR_EMAIL@hotmail.com"
 set imap_pass = "YOUR_PASSWORD"
 set smtp_url = "smtp://YOUR_EMAIL@hotmail.com@smtp.live.com:587/"
 set smtp_pass = "YOUR_PASSWORD"
 set from = "YOUR_EMAIL@hotmail.com"
 set realname = "FIRST LAST"
 set ssl_force_tls = yes

Note, smtp_url has two "@" symbols. Without this, sending mail will fail with an SASL error. For the curious, the rest of my configuration file is below:

 # The editor to edit the plaintext of the email in

 set editor = "emacs"

 set folder = "imaps://imap-mail.outlook.com:993"

 set spoolfile = "+INBOX"

 set imap_check_subscribed

 set hostname = hotmail.com

 set mail_check = 25

 set timeout = 300

 set imap_keepalive = 300

 set postponed = "+[hotmail]/Drafts"

 set record = "+[hotmail]/Sent Mail"

 set header_cache=~/.mutt/cache/headers

 set message_cachedir=~/.mutt/cache/bodies

 set certificate_file=~/.mutt/certificates

 set move = no

 set include

 set sort = 'threads'

 set sort_aux = 'reverse-last-date-received'

 set auto_tag = yes

 ignore "Authentication-Results:"

 ignore "DomainKey-Signature:"

 ignore "DKIM-Signature:"

 hdr_order Date From To Cc

 alternative_order text/plain text/html *

 auto_view text/html

 bind editor <Tab> complete-query

 bind editor ^T complete

 bind editor <space> noop

 # Gmail-style keyboard shortcuts

 macro index,pager y "<enter-command>unset trash\n <delete-message>" "Gmail archive message"

 macro index,pager d "<enter-command>set trash=\"imaps://imap.googlemail.com/[GMail]/Bin\"\n <delete-message>" "Gmail delete message"

 macro index,pager gi "<change-folder>=INBOX<enter>" "Go to inbox"

 macro index,pager ga "<change-folder>=[Gmail]/All Mail<enter>" "Go to all mail"

 macro index,pager gs "<change-folder>=[Gmail]/Starred<enter>" "Go to starred messages"

 macro index,pager gd "<change-folder>=[Gmail]/Drafts<enter>" "Go to drafts"