Entourage 2001 won't access Hotmail email account

[PS Macintosh]

1. For years, I have used Ent 2001 (and Mac OS 9.1) to access free
Hotmail accounts to receive and send email.
Suddenly, in the last week, I am no longer able to receive and send
email via Ent 2001 in any of my free hotmail accounts.

I've read that Hotmail has terminated the ability of Outlook and
Outllook Express from accessing the free hotmail accounts.

I've read that some Outlook users are even having access problems with
their paid hotmail accounts. But that is unclear.

I've now sent a message to Hotmail Tech Support and am waiting an
answer to see if they have terminated access via Entourage.
I suspect so.
Has anyone heard definitively?


2. The Ent and Hotmail combination worked before the last couple of
days, however very poorly--see below.

Old Problem:
In previous years, I had spent months unsuccessfully trying to resolve
why Ent 2001 would STALL from receiving and sending email from
multiple hotmail accounts.

Ent would access my one Earthlink account without problem and
speedily.

Neither Ent Tech Support, nor Hotmail Tech Support, (nor this group),
was ever able to find a cure.

The painful work-around for years has been to make schedules that
process to only 1-3 hotmail accounts at a time.
This usually works 90% of time, but still gets STALLED on occasion.
Then I have to quit and restart Ent (and sometimes restart the
computer) in order to "clear" the STALL.

I've been living with this work-around for years, but now I suspect
that Ent will not work with Hotmail accounts at all (at least not free
accounts).

I use multiple accounts to separate my life and to separate high-spam
accounts from low-spam.

Now I suspect that I will have to terminate my long relationship with
Hotmail.

Are there still any other providers of free email accounts on the
internet?

 

[Phyber Quest]

I can still access my Hotmail through entourage, but I hear that in the
beginning of next year, it may not be so, unless you pay for access, or it
is free if you go online to a browser.

This is Microsoft way of stopping spam, because lots of spamming has all the
address on their computer, and send it from outlook through hotmail account.

Now, if there is a high volume of email being sent out, Microsoft can trace
the account through a credit card that users have to pay to access it
through outlook, and maybe entourage.

Oh well.

PQ

 

[Lee]

I sent a complaint to Hotmail Support thru their system on Oct. 2.
Apparently a machine named "Edward" expresses all the heartfelt concern,
WORD FOR WORD, that other members of this newsgroup have received. According
to them, we are "helping [them] update Hotmail to better serve [our] needs."

Here is the generic reply I received today (including my original
complaint):

 

[Phyber Quest]

My bad, it may be entourage 2001, I have 2004, so that may be the difference
right there. I hope you will get access soon.

PQ

 

[PS Macintosh]

Lee,

I finally received an email back from Hotmail that was similar to the
one you received, although slightly different.
(See my messages below.)

This time, Lotis (vs Edward) replied and said that
"Free users who are already accessing their mail through
Outlook/Outlook Express/Entourage will continue to be able to do so
until late in the first quarter of 2005....."

She tried to fix my free hotmail account so that I would have access,
but it didn't work.

Below is my message back to her with commentary and the earlier
messages between us.

What do you think?

-Philip


-----------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Lotis,

Thank you for responding.

1. Thank you for clarifying that the problem was due to a policy
change and action by Hotmail (and not due to any problem in the
computers on my end).


2. Thank you for trying to make it so that I could access my long-time
hotmail accounts for a limited amount of additional time. However,
your attempt was unsuccessful and I am still not able to use MS
Entourage 2001 (Mac OS 9.1) to access and download my email from any
of my 18 hotmail accounts.
.......

Question:
If you can do something to allow my Hotmail accounts to have ACCESS
via Entourage for a while longer, that would be great. So that I
could have time to figure out how to make this change-over.
Please let me know one way or the other.
Thanks!


3. Too bad that Hotmail didn't ask its users for input into this major
decision.
It is unfortunate that Hotmail did not give clear, understandable
NOTICE of what change and action they were going to take.
It is a major upheaval of my email systems, including my volunteer
work efforts with several non-profit groups, resulting in the sudden
necessity to spend hours and DAYS of additional work on my end to
resolve.
I believe that Hotmail's decision is an extreme OVER-KILL approach
which will result in the termination of many long-term relationships
with people who were NOT misusing the hotmail email system for
spamming purposes.
Hotmail could have used a more SELECTIVE approach and solution by
identifying which Hotmail accounts would be cut-off from 3rd-party
email clients and which accounts would be allowed to continue having
access via 3rd-party email clients--segregating those two groups on
different servers. Older hotmail accounts that had been established
for over "x" months and which had volume and usage history that showed
that they were not blatant conduits for spam should have been deemed
"trusted" accounts and "trusted" users and allowed to retain their
access by 3rd party email programs (especially other Microsoft
products).
Hotmail has made the use of other Microsoft products (MS Office's
Entourage, etc.) virtually worthless and ineffective to accomplish
their intended purpose (to handle email in a consolidated, centralized
fashion on my personal computer).

Oh, well!

--Philip


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"MSN Hotmail Support" on 10/5/04 12:50 PM, wrote:

Hello Philip...,


Thank you for writing to MSN Hotmail.

This is Lotis and I am writing in response to your inability to
access your account with Entourage.

First of all, I would like to apologize for the delay in responding
to your message. Every message that Hotmail receives is very
important. Unfortunately, we recently received an extremely high
volume of e-mail messages and are working diligently to catch up.

As of September 27 2004, the protocol that allows Hotmail Customers
to access their MSN Hotmail account from within Outlook or Outlook
Express or Entourage (WebDAV) is no longer available to any new users
with free Hotmail accounts.
Free users who are already accessing their mail through
Outlook/Outlook Express/Entourage will continue to be able to do so
until late in the first quarter of 2005, after which time the protocol
will only be available as part of MSN email subscription services. It
is possible that during the time we were making these changes you may
have had problems accessing your email via Outlook/Outlook
Express/Entourage WebDAV as part of the transition process.

I have checked your account and you should now be able to access it
using Entourage. I want to apologize for the interruption in service
you experienced. However if you are still having problems accessing
your account from Outlook/Outlook Express/Entourage please reply back
so we can further work with you to get your issue resolved.

We appreciate your patience and understanding regarding this matter.

Should you have other concerns, please don't hesitate to write back.


Sincerely,


Lotis D.
MSN Hotmail Technical Support

--- Original Message --- --------------------------------------------
From: philip....
To: support.....
Sent: Mon Oct 4 12:58:23 PDT 2004
Subject: Broken / Mail / Receive


Date: Mon Oct 4 13:05:00 2004

Operating System: macos
Connection Type: dsl
Browser Type: ie 5+

Starting several days ago, I now can not RECEIVE or SEND any email
from my hotmail accounts using MS Office Entourage 2001 on Mac OS 9.1.
Prior to this time, Entourage 2001 worked fine with my Hotmail
accounts for many years.
(I have had about 10 Hotmail accounts for about 6 years of
relationship with Hotmail to handle email from various source: some
personal, some trade, some more susceptible to being spammed than
others. So this is one way that I have controlled the spam and
controlled who has access to me.)

I have seen some online talk that Hotmail has cut off access to free
Hotmail accounts via Outlook and Outlook Express for "security" and
"spam" reasons....and that paid Hotmail accounts are having access
problems as well in the last week.

Has Hotmail cut off access from Entourage 2001 as well?
......

-Philip


------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Lee P.]

Hi, Philip,

What do I think? I think they are full of ...well I can't say what I think
here. I cannot believe that they would treat their customers so bad (we own
multiple Microsoft products for both Mac and Windows)!

"Edward" still has not gotten back to me, but I did notice a key phrase in
"Lotis's" reply to you:

...no longer available to any new users with free Hotmail accounts

Interesting, hunh?

Lee

 

[PS Macintosh]

Hi Lee,

Yes, they are full of it.

Here's the latest on my end.

I sent a reply back to Lotis saying that her "fix" to my hotmail
account had not worked and that IF she CAN fix my 18 hotmail accounts
so that they work with Entourage until later (maybe as late as Spring
2005) then please do so.

I received a response back today, this time from Jomary, saying that
she is sorry that I am having a problem "in setting up your Hotmail
accounts through Entourage " with lengthy instructions in how to do
so.

I replied back that that was NOT the problem and repeated my earlier
request to have Entourage access reinstated.
Or for Hotmail to say for certain that Entourage access will not be
allowed (which I think is the current case).

It is clear that one hand does not know what the other is doing at
Hotmail.
Once they get someone who can understand English, then I think the
answer will be that Entourage access has been cutoff from Hotmail
accounts (at least "free" ones), as it is also cutoff from Yahoo
accounts.

HOTMAIL:
Does anyone with a FREE Hotmail account still have access to download
your email via Entourage??
Does anyone with a PAID Hotmail account still have access to download
your email via Entourage?? (Some users are saying yes and no.)

YAHOO:
Does anyone with a FREE Yahoo account have access to download your
email via Entourage??
Does anyone with a PAID Yahoo account have access to download your
email via Entourage??

OTHER FREE EMAIL PROVIDERS:
What about other FREE email services--is Entourage access allowed or
not??
(Users please give your firsthand feedback.)

--Philip

 

[Sonjay]

I just sent *and* received with my free Hotmail account through Entourage.

I don't use that account much, and don't expect to be able to much longer,
but as of today, it's still working.