How to Download Outlook.com (Hotmail) Emails to Hard Drive?

Written By Md Shoaib
Updated on February 26th, 2025

Summary: Outlook.com, formerly known as Hotmail, is one of the most widely used email services. Whether you’re backing up important emails or migrating to a new platform, downloading your Outlook.com emails to your hard drive is a practical solution. In this guide, we’ll walk you through two reliable methods: using the Outlook desktop application and the Hotmail Backup Tool to download Hotmail emails to Hard Drive .

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Table of Contents

Overview

Hotmail has been one of the most popular email service providers till 2012. After that, it was renamed Outlook.com. Since the acquisition made by Microsoft, this email service has integrated various advanced features to deliver the best service to the users. Hotmail as Outlook.com consists of all the features of Microsoft Outlook.

While using an email service, it is advised to back up your mailbox at regular intervals. It has various benefits. Also, taking data protection into consideration, it has now become mandatory to save your emails offline.

Before discussing how to export Hotmail emails to hard drive, we will first explain the main reasons for migrating your mailbox data.

Why Download Hotmail Emails to Hard Drive?

Besides benefits, numerous reasons emphasize the necessity of downloading your mailbox data. Below are a few prominent causes for migrating your Hotmail emails into a local drive.

Data Backup: Protect your emails from accidental deletion or account issues.
Offline Access: Access your emails without an internet connection.
Migration: Easily transfer emails to another email client or service.

These are the most significant causes for backing up Hotmail emails to the hard drive. Now, let us explore different methods to migrate Hotmail emails to PC.

Backup Hotmail Emails to Hard Drive Manually

Hotmail or Outlook.com provides various inbuilt features to download Hotmail emails to hard drive. You can download your emails as an EML file or print these emails in PDF file format. MS Outlook also has the Export mailbox functionality that allows you to back up your complete mailbox all at once. These are the conventional manual methods to export emails from Hotmail account to a computer. Below we explain these DIY methods. You can opt for any suitable technique as per your priority.

Step 1: Set Up Your Outlook.com Account in the Outlook Desktop App

Login to your Hotmail email account using the required to download and install the Microsoft Outlook desktop application credentials.
Open Outlook and click File > Add Account.

Enter your Outlook.com email address and follow the prompts to complete the setup.
Go to File > Open & Export > Import/Export.

Select Export to a file and click Next.
Choose Outlook Data File (.pst) and click Next.

Select the folders you want to export (e.g., Inbox, Sent Items) and click Next.

Choose a location on your hard drive to save the file and click Finish.

The above techniques to download Hotmail emails to hard drives are effective and simple. They are ideal when your Hotmail mailbox has less data. However, we do not suggest you adopt these methods when you have too many emails to migrate. In such a scenario, you should choose professional software to back up your Hotmail emails.

Automated Solution to Backup Hotmail Emails to Hard Drive

CloudMigration Outlook.Com Backup Tool has made it easy and effective to save Hotmail emails to hard drives into various file formats. Using this utility, you can also export Hotmail mailboxes to other email providers like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, Office 365, etc. It provides you with all the latest features to simplify and customize the output as per your requirements. Moreover, the application is compatible with all versions of Windows OS.

Steps to Download Outlook.com tEmails to Local Drive

Download and install the Outlook backup tool.
Log in using your Outlook.com (formally Hotmail) credentials.
Select the folders or emails you wish to back up.
Choose the desired format like PDF, PST, EML, DOC, and destination on your hard drive.
Initiate the backup process.

Conclusion

We hope this article has provided you with all the necessary information regarding how to download Hotmail emails to hard drive. We discussed the main reasons for migrating your mailbox data and the different methods you can use to download these emails. For fast, effective, and secure backup, we recommend you opt for professional email backup software.

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About The Author:

Md Shoaib

Hi, I’m Md Shoaib! I enjoy writing about technologies and helping my readers with their queries, and I’m always looking for new ways to challenge myself and grow. Professionally, I work as a Digital Marketer, where I specialize in SEO and Copywriting.