Cancel a Hotmail or Yahoo Email Account
your Hotmail or Yahoo Mail email account and get it deleted.
Even though Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail are the world's largest email services, that doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to be satisfied with them. For whatever reason, sometimes it's just time to move on...
Below, you'll find a step by step guide to closing your Hotmail email account or cancelling your Yahoo! Mail service.
We'll mention it again below, but please remember that deleting your account is a one-way process: once it's gone, you've lost all the email in it forever.
Cancel your Hotmail email account
To close your Hotmail email account, follow the steps below.
IMPORTANT: Deleting your email account is a one-way process, so you'd better be 100% sure you really want to go ahead. Proceed at your own risk!
- Go to Hotmail.com and log into your account.
- Look for the "Help" link, which is in the top right of the screen.
- Type "Close account" into the search box at the top of the Help window.
- Choose the "Close your account" link.
- Follow the instructions on the screen to close your Hotmail account (there are separate processes depending on whether you have a free or a paid subscription).
- You may have to speak to MSN/Hotmail customer support to complete the process of closing your account.
NOTE: It takes time to delete your Hotmail account (30 days at the time this article was written) even after you close it.
Cancel your Yahoo Mail email account
If you don't log into a regular Yahoo Mail account for 4 months, it will automatically get deactivated.
If you want to close your Yahoo Mail account more quickly, you can do so, but you're going to have to wave goodbye to all of Yahoo's services, not just email. For instance, your Geocities web page, groups, auctions and all other Yahoo services will also be deleted. For a full explanation of the consequences of deleting a Yahoo account, see Yahoo's help system entry on the subject.
To close your Yahoo account (including Mail and all other services), follow the steps below.
IMPORTANT: Deleting your account is a one-way process, so you'd better be 100% sure you really want to go ahead. Proceed at your own risk!
- Go to Mail.Yahoo.com and log into your account.
- Look for the "Help" link, which is in the top right of the screen under the search box.
- Choose the "Account Configuration" link under the "Using My Yahoo! Mail Account" section of the main Help page.
- At the bottom of the page, you'll see a section called "Closing My Account". Choose the "How do I close my account?" link.
- Follow the instructions on the screen to close your Yahoo account.
NOTE: Even though your account will be instantly marked as being cancelled, it will actually be removed about 90 days later.
If you're looking for inspiration for your next email service, or you need more help, why not visit the email discussion forums?