Outlook 2007 and AOL

[M Skabialka]

A friend said he installed the new Office 2007 beta and was able to set up
AOL as an account in Outlook. The emails look like any other email account
emails!



I had thought that AOL used a proprietary format that wasn't readable by
Outlook. Since I also have an AOL account, when the new version of Office
comes out, will I be able to take all of my old AOL emails and move them
into a .pst file? Then I wouldn't have to use the AOL program to read them,
and would be able to sort through and delete the junk that accumulates.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Ask your friend how he set up the email account. I don't have AOL, but I
wouldn't be surprised if you could do this with a POP account.
Outlook 2007 doesn't introduce any new formats for accessing mails, so
if he can access AOL mail today with 2007, you can do so as well with
2003 e.g.. The only new feature in 2007 is automatic configuration,
which tries to set up your email account without you knowing the
normally needed information (servers, etc.).
Ask your friend to go into Tools, Accounts and tell you what it says for
him on the screen that opens when he clicks change on his AOL account.
Outlook 2003's account dialog looks similar to the 2007 dialog, so you
should be able to easily set up the same settings. You might have to go
through all the tabs in the advanced dialog as well and make sure you
set them up identically to what your friend has.

Patrick Schmid

 

[M Skabialka]

I watched him do it - he just put in his full name, email address and
password - Outlook did the rest. But I'd like to know what format the
emails will be in if I mosve them to .pst files, if I can do that at all,
and will these be a normal Outlook format so I don't have to use the AOL
intrface any more - ever!

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Yep, that's the automatic configuration feature of 2007 in action. The
emails will be in an Outlook format (in a PST file).
Why don't you check the settings dialog as I suggested in my last post?
That would tell you whether this is a POP3/IMAP account e.g..

Patrick Schmid

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

AOL uses IMAP.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Ah. Thanks Sue!

So it should be easy to set up with 2003 as well.

Patrick Schmid