Microsoft KB Archive/243418

= OL97: AOL E-mail Service Is Not Available to Microsoft Outlook Users =

PSS ID Number: 243418

Article Last Modified on 1/26/2001

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The information in this article applies to:


 * Microsoft Outlook 97

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This article was previously published under Q243418





SUMMARY
Outlook supports all popular Internet e-mail protocols. This allows Outlook users to send and receive messages with almost all Internet service providers (ISP). In addition, Outlook supports many proprietary client and server e-mail protocols that allow 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 message 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 the following two factors:
 * It does not 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 requesting this capability to justify providing it to their customers.

If this is a feature that you would like to see made available by AOL, you can provide that information to AOL at the following AOL Web site:

http://www.aol.com/info/feedback.html

Keywords: kbinfo KB243418

Technology: kbOutlook97Search kbOutlookSearch kbZNotKeyword3

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