The popular Hotmail has been renamed to Outlook by Microsoft and I personally liked it because the interface looks cleaner, operations are faster and more user friendly. However there is one feature where some of you may find it annoying where Outlook automatically logs you in to Messenger and there is no built-in option to prevent that from happening. Unlike Gmail where you can turn off the Chat and it stays that way until you turn it back on. When you’re signed in to Windows Live Messenger and also logged in to your Outlook email account at the same time, Windows Live Messenger will show that you are signed in from 2 places which can be quite scary because it triggers your attention that someone else may be logging in to your Outlook or Messenger but in fact it is just you.
Other than that, I’ve also experienced missing the messages sent by my contacts because it ended up in Outlook instead of Windows Live Messenger even though Messenger says that the message will appear in all these places.
Selecting the Sign out option from the top right menu will only log you out of Outlook.com for that session only and you’ll be automatically signed in again the next time you login to Outlook.com. Although there is no official option to permanently stop Outlook from automatically signing in to Messenger, there is a workaround solution to prevent that from happening.
Setting your status to Invisible from the web based Outlook by clicking on your name located at the top right and select Invisible from the list will work if you only login to Outlook.com but don’t connect to any messaging applications such as Skype or Windows Live Messenger.
Outlook.com remembers the status that you manually select but Windows Live Messenger will always have the higher priority for status when compared to Outlook based on the results below that I got during testing.
- If you’re signed in to Windows Live Messenger first as Available, and then sign in to Outlook as Invisible, your status will be shown as Available.
- If you’re signed in to Windows Live Messenger first as Invisible(appear offline), and then sign in to Outlook as Available, your status will be shown as Invisible (appear offline).
- If you’re signed in to Outlook first with Invisible status as default, and then sign in to Windows Live Messenger as Available, your status will be shown as Available.
- If you’re signed in to Outlook first with Available status as default, and then sign in to Windows Live Messenger as Invisible(appear offline), your status will be shown as Invisible(appear offline).
To permanently disable Outlook.com from automatically logging in to Messenger, the simple and easy solution can be found in page 2.
It’s pathetic that I have to do this to stop Outlook.com from logging me into Messenger every time I check my email on the web.
Thanks for the tip. I noticed that clearing your internet cache sets your status to available on the web based Outlook once you log in.
Is there a way to set it to permanently invisible? I have firefox clear my cache on exiting the browser every time.
Thank you very much. A very helpfull tip
Thank you but I want to be never ever login in the first place, even i want to check my contact too
Thank you very much. A very helpfull tip.
Then you should just set your status to Invisible from Outlook.com
This is for local computer, what will happened if I change my computer?