The information in this article applies to:

- Microsoft Outlook 98
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SUMMARY
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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