How do I organize my Hotmail folders?

Like many different Web-based applications, Hotmail has some user interface subtleties that can be darn confusing if you aren't aware of them. I think that a combination of a couple of different things are affecting your experience with your Hotmail mailbox.

For example, when you're looking at your mail, the top column headers look like this:

Yeah, it's a busy screenshot there, and that's part of the problem, frankly. There's so much you can do that the nuances of the interface are just about impossible to see.

I have my mail being sorted in ascending order, by from address rather than by date. How can I tell? The tiny up arrow symbol -- ^ -- immediately to the left of the word "From" on the column headings.

Click on "Subject" and you'll be sorting by subject. Click on "Size" and you'll be able to organize your messages largest to smallest or, with another click, smallest to largest. Click on "Date" and you'll get it organized the way you want, newest to oldest.

Now, one more nuance of the Hotmail Web interface: See where it says "Everyone" adjacent to "Show me mail from"? Click on that and you'll find a really slick additional interface filter:

These are nice additional filters you can apply to your mailbox, and the next time you go to look at your mail, they'll be pre-selected.

Given all that, I imagine you can figure out how to get things set to your desired view. Then quit the browser, start it up again, log back into Hotmail and you should be in good shape!