OL98: AOL E-mail Service Is Not Available for Microsoft Outlook Users

ID: Q243417


The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft Outlook 98


SUMMARY

Outlook supports all popular Internet e-mail protocols. This allows Outlook users to send and receive e-mail via almost all Internet Service Providers. In addition, Outlook supports a number of proprietary client/server e-mail protocols, enabling Outlook users to communicate with e-mail servers or services that do not support standard Internet protocols.

America Online (AOL) uses such a proprietary protocol to communicate between the user and the AOL service. Microsoft has participated in several meetings with AOL to discuss ways to provide AOL e-mail functionality to Outlook users, either through a standard protocol, or through an interface to their proprietary protocol. Microsoft has offered to help develop the software necessary to provide AOL connectivity if AOL will provide the needed technical information. AOL has decided not to provide this functionality to their users, either directly or by providing the information necessary for Microsoft to do so.

AOL has indicated their decision is based on two factors:

  • It doesn't fit the AOL business plans for their users to use non-AOL software to connect to their service.
  • AOL says they have not received enough feedback from customers wanting this capability to justify providing it to their customers.
If this is a feature that you would like to see made available by AOL, please provide that feedback via their Web site at:
http://www.aol.com/info/feedback.html

Additional query words: 98

Keywords :
Version : WINDOWS:
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbinfo


Last Reviewed: October 7, 1999
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