I have the exact same problems with AOL. I have tried many, many solution to no avail. Sending messages has worked some in the past, then stops working and I get a variety of error messages in Outlook. It is not working again and been like this for about one week. I have switch to Earthlink as my ISP, still keeping AOL for a while, but can't get Earthlink to work just yet. Earthlink told me straight up that they do support POP3 / SMTP email through Outlook using a separate address and POP3 address. Let me know if you have any luck. AOL gave me the run around and said they do not support Outlook or recommend using it. a marketing scam, I believe
See my message(s) about this early on 2/16