Save an email message as draft in the Hotmail Drafts folder
HotmailUniversity
The following scenario is likely to happen frequently: you are typing a new email inside your Hotmail account, or replying to a message you received, and it is a long email. You do not need to finish composing and sending this email message in one go, since Windows Live Hotmail includes the "Save as Draft" functionality which lets you stop composing the current email, save a copy of it inside your Drafts folder, and resume writing it at your convenience, whether from this computer or any other internet-connected computer to which you have access!
Saving emails as drafts in Windows Live Hotmail
Once you are inside the new email window (the Hotmail message editor, pictured below), you can start typing your blank email / reply / forward, and at any point manually save the email in progress as follows: click on the "Save draft" link in the toolbar at the top (or use the corresponding keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+S).
To give you a visual confirmation that a copy of the message was successfully saved into your Drafts folder, Hotmail will show a notification below the toolbar: "Your message has been saved in the Drafts folder", as seen on the screenshot:
Save current email warning
If you accidentally try to go to another email folder, or go to another web page, Hotmail.com will give you a chance to change your mind if you are in the middle of composing an email message, which prevents the unsaved email from being permanently lost: "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page? You're about to throw away this message without sending it. Press OK to continue, or Cancel to stay on the current page". Click "Cancel" to keep working on your email:
Hotmail Tip: The new Hotmail (latest version of the webmail service) also includes an "auto-save" feature. While you are composing a lengthy message, you may come across a notification like this: "this email has been automatically saved in your Drafts folder" (from memory, since we can't seem to be able to reproduce this notification message).
Resume editing and composing an email message saved as draft
When you are ready to continue editing an email message earlier saved as draft, just click on the Hotmail "Drafts" folder on the left, and double-click on the email in question: it will re-open in the email editor, and you can finish it and click "Send".