To configure Outlook 2010 to check an AOL email account, take the following steps.
- Open Outlook and click on Next at the startup window.
- When prompted as to whether you would like to configure an E-mail account, maintain the default option of "yes" and click on Next.
- At the Add New Account window, choose "Manually configure server settings or additional server types" and then click on Next.
- At the Choose Service window, maintain the default option of "Internet E-mail" and click on Next.
-
At the Internet E-mail Settings window, you will need to
provide the relevant information for your AOL email account. In the
username field, include "@aol.com" as part of the user name, e.g.,
jdoe@aol.com. You will also need to choose
whether you will access your AOL email account using the
Post Office
Protocol (POP) or the
Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). The default option is
POP3, version 3 of POP. With that option, the email in your inbox will
be downloaded to Outbox and deleted from the server after a specified
period of time; by default Outlook will leave it on the server for 14 days.
If you log into the AOL website to check your
email after you've downloaded it with Outlook and delete a message while
viewing your email in a browser, it won't be available to download with
Outlook, if you subsequently check your AOL email with Outlook, although
that may not matter to you. A disadvantage of using the POP protocol is
that it only downloads email from the inbox, not any other folders you
may have created to hold specific email messages. Also, by default email
is deleted from the email server after you download it to Outlook, so email
you've already downloaded won't be visible to you if you check your email
through a web browser at a later time—by default Outlook will leave
the email there for 14 days, though. You can change that setting, though, once
you've filled in account information by clicking on the More Settings
button, then clicking on the Advanced tab and choosing how long
a copy of messages should be left on the server.
If you select IMAP for the account type, you can view email in other folders besides the inbox and Outlook's view of the email in your account is synchronized with the email messages maintained on the AOL email server, so you can check with a web browser or with Outlook and see the same messages in your email folders. You could also set up Outlook on another system and select IMAP there as well to see the same email messages on a separate system where you are using Outlook.
The information you should put in the incoming mail server and outgoing mail server fields is as follows:
Protocol Server Port Settings POP3 Incoming mail server (POP3): pop.aol.com
Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.aol.comPOP3: 995-SSL
SMTP: 465-SSLIMAP Incoming mail server (IMAP): imap.aol.com
Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.aol.comIMAP: 993-SSL
SMTP: 465-SSLPut a check mark in the "Remember password" check box, if you don't want to have to enter your password every time you open Outlook to check your email.
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