hotmail on a MAC

Like you, I have a hotmail address that is decades old. I use it to this day (xxxxx@hotmail.com) via both Webmail and Outlook. Hotmail addresses still work perfectly fine. I am using mine on my iPhone & Macs.

Webmail: You can sign in to your hotmail account by going to https://login.live.com You will be signing into Microsoft, which is correct because hotmail is owned & operated by Microsoft. Use your normal hotmail email account id & password to sign in this way.

App-based email: There are a number of potential issues & workarounds depending on your individual situation.

Exactly what versions of macOS, Outlook, Apple Mail and.or other email app are you currently using? In your email app, what POP/IMAP/SMTP settings are you using (especially incoming & outgoing mail server addresses)?

I moved over to Outlook, it's on the App Store. I use that for my Hotmail and Outlook addresses.

It seems this is a rather common issue:

hotmail not working

Microsoft bought out Hotmail, and technically, it no longer exists. Members are supposed to be using the updated @outlook.com mail server.

I know it's a huge pain to update who knows how many sites and friends with a new email address, but I think you're going to need to switch. If not now, it wouldn't surprise me if MS shuts down the old Hotmail servers in the near future.

The following article from Microsoft could perhaps be of interest to you:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/modern-authentication-methods-now-needed-to-continue-syncing-outlook-email-in-non-microsoft-email-apps-c5d65390-9676-4763-b41f-d7986499a90d

Also, if necessary, you should be able to use outlook.com via a web browser for old hotmail addresses.

Not 100% sure, but like Apple, Microsoft allows email alliases. They might allow you to move to an outlook.com address and use the hotmail address as an alias for the outlook address.

We shut down our in-home business nearly three years ago. About six months before the end of 2021, we started new email accounts that would live on after those connected to the business web site died. Those business email addresses actually went on until July this year. Which was on purpose to make sure no important email contacts had been missed or forgotten. And there were two or three.

We spent a couple of days just finding every single site or contact we could think of and putting them in a word processing app (site name, user name, password). Then we weeded out as many as we could. Many of them being business related contacts we would never use again.

Once that was done, then we started changing only those left in our lists to the new addresses. The ones we didn't care about, we just left as is so they'd bounce as undeliverable. Which would force their spam emails to stop. That sounds rude, but if you tell them you're canceling your account, then you get hounded for new contact info.

Anyway, I do get how little fun you're up against. But I'd bite the bullet now instead of having to rush if MS does pull the plug on Hotmail, switches everyone over to outlook.com, and gives little warning or time to users before it happens.