cannot add contacts

[Artie Naslund]

Hello,

Recently I've been unable to add any contacts to pidgin, saying that 
it's an invalid email address, despite it being a valid email address.  
In my hotmail account it says the email is invalid and wont let me add, 
while in gmail it lets me add, but it has a crossed out circle next to 
the name and any valid contact I add always appears offline with a 
crossed out circle next to their name. Any ideas?

I'm running 2.7.9 on Windows 7 x64