Thank you both. Yes, Breen, hopefully it is just a snaffu right now, due to their updating. On the email I sent to XXXX@ excite.com yesterday at 2:23PM I received 2 delay warnings and just now received a warning that it was a failure. Unable to deliver message to the following recipients, due to being unable to connect successfully to the destination mail server. Luckily the email is attached. Heck, I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday, let alone who all I emailed about what? Sheesh...wish they would get all their ducks in a row ans quick. The member @excite.com hasn't had problems that she is aware of anyway, receiving emails from other folks. Sorry to rant. Sue

Thanks for your questions and suggestions mikie. I have Windows 7, generally use chrome (Version 36.0.1985.125 m) although sometimes switch to IE for the occasional site that isn't optimized for Chrome. Did try to create an email using IE and it made no difference. Not sure what you're asking about online hotmail - my addy is @hotmail.com but it's accessed through Outlook. I do use Adblock+ and have tried turning that off with no change. Also have been using Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes anti malware (the free version) for quite a while and I'm ashamed to say I don't know how to temporarily disable either one. I know how to remove the programs but can't find a way to temporarily disable - I'm having a duh moment - what am I missing?

are they able to just click directly on the link name of the picture and open it that way? I use hotmail as my primary email and usually when I have pics that do not come through in the body of the email there is a blue clickable link in the title or somewhere in the header usually with the name of the actual pic an if I click that I can view it. I have had some problems with hotmail recently with pictures also I think it is all the changes they are making, they will eventually end the old hotmail that we love and make us all move to live mail which I really do not want to do.

that happens when you use a real word simple password, especially email accounts should have very strong passwords, never use real words. Make them at least 8 characters long and use letters, numbers, and symbols. Create one that makes sense to you, for example, the initials of your children and the last 2 numbers of their birth year and throw in one of these between the initials and dates * or! even periods count. or the last four digits of your phone number * street number or your marriage year + initials. those are combo's that only mean something to you they are unique they will be hard to hack. If you currently have a real word or phrase or name as your email password you are asking to be hacked it is really that simple. And think of what all many people keep in their email, any time you register some where it sends a copy of the user name and password information back to you. etc. Never think it won't happen to you! I just had to help my sister I had told her numerous times her dogs name was a terrible password, it is short a real word and only letters. Yet she was astonished when hers was hacked. I knew it would happen but trying to get people to understand that for some reason is about impossible till it happens to them which is so unfortunate. About the only thing that you can do is contact the email client and tell them what happened and hope they believe you and reset the password, if not you may have to abandon that address and start new. It can happen in any email client, my sister was yahoo. contact Hotmail as soon as possible to get them aware of the problem.