[hahainternet]

I signed up for a 'comedy' outlook account without realising they would deactivate and migrate my hotmail account entirely.

I was probably dumb for not reading the small print but they're definitely pushing people over and inflating their 'growth' because of it.

[dpark]

You could have kept your old address and still gotten the "Outlook.com experience". You could also have created an alias and left your existing email address as your login. You chose to rename your account, which makes the new address your login, and also makes your previous address an alias (which means you'll still get mail sent to it, but it's no longer your login).

I'm not clear why you'd expect that your new address would be completely separate from your existing account. That would be a terrible experience for most people. "Sure, I'll upgrade to Outlook. Oh wait, now I have two separate accounts, with two separate inboxes, and two separate logins. I guess I'll just never use the new one, because it's a pain."

If you are unhappy with the outlook.com address you've chosen, you can rename your account again. (This link is harder to find than it should be, especially if you want an Outlook.com address.)

https://account.live.com/ChangeId?fl=nd

If you do want a completely new account, you should create one without "upgrading". Just log out (or open an InPrivate/Incognito window) and go to Outlook.com. From there you can sign up for an account that will indeed be completely separate from your other.

Disclosure: Microsoft employee

[hahainternet]

I was more pointing out that the stats were being inflated by the moving of users from another service onto this one. I was not complaining about my own mistake.

However that being said, I thank you for the advice and have indeed now changed my address to something more acceptable.

With regard to what I expected to happen, I expected an additional 'from' email to be added and an option regarding new mail to be given. I didn't expect my various logins to change. Still, all resolved now. Thank you.

[dpark]

Glad I could help. I can understand wanting to just have a new "from" address. Outlook/Hotmail does support that. That's the alias concept (https://account.live.com/AddAssocId?fl=nd). I think the Outlook upgrade flow might offer that as well, but I'm not sure.

One big missing feature is the ability to rename to an existing alias. That would have fixed your issue as well. I believe that this is "kind of" supported, but I've never tried it. You can delete an alias and then immediately rename to that address. No one else will be able to grab it for 6 months, but if you've added a bunch of aliases, you might be in a "no new alias" window, and I think in that case your rename action might fail (or might not; I'm not sure and unwilling to break my account trying. :)).