Outlook 2011 and Hotmail - Connection issues

Hello,

I just installed Mac Office 2011 and am having trouble connecting my hotmail account to Outlook. I go to add my hotmail account and everything seems to work, but it does not show up on the left side under inbox or anything. When I go back into settings, it shows the hotmail as my default account, but I can't see any of my messages... Also, periodically alerts pop up in the bottom right hand corner showing "new" messages, however they are really, really old emails from my hotmail account. I can click on the alert and read the old message, but I can't find where those messages are on Outlook. I have successfully added my gmail account and my home university's account. Please help! What am I doing wrong?

One other thing to mention, when I delete the hotmail acct and try to add it again, it always adds "On my computer" under the inbox section. This "inbox" keeps popping up with old old emails. So I go into preferences/general and hide it. I have been trying to figure this out for like an hour and a half. Please help!

Hi,

So I decided to re-add my hotmail account again. I didn't realize this, but the "On my Computer" folder that appears in the left hand navigation bar appears to actually be the inbox. I can now view my emails, drafts, sent items, deleted items, and junk email!!

I think I had it before, but kept hiding that folder because I have like 700 old emails and outlook kept popping up saying all these messages were new emails. Plus they would come in chunks of like 20-50 messages at one time so it seemed like it was never going to end.

Thank you for your help!