Does OL2007 HTTP mail still work?

[Milhouse Van Houten]

As of Saturday, Outlook no longer connects to my HTTP Hotmail account (note
that I'm only using Outlook, not the Outlook connector). It just prompts for
my password repeatedly. I see in the account that it's configured for this
URL.
http://services.msn.com/svcs/hotmail/httpmail.asp

Which if you try to access it via IE, will only ask for your password, too
(not that I've ever used it via IE before).

Does the URL need updating? I noticed that WLM uses this:
http://mail.services.live.com/DeltaSync_v2.0.0/sync.aspx

But it doesn't work in Outlook at all.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

You'll need to install the Outlook Connector.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7aad7e6a-931e-438a-950c-5e9ea66322d4

 

[Milhouse Van Houten]

Where was that announcement made? It seems a crazy thing to do suddenly
considering most people will use in-built 2007 functionality. Also, is this
tied in somehow with the apparently imminent enabling of POP3 (and or IMAP),
for which many people will drop this other method in a heartbeat?

 

[Roady [MVP]]

No, that has nothing to do with it. The Outlook Connector has been available
for years already and the old way of syncing (via the build-in HTTP
connection in Outlook) has been being phased out for a long time now
already. Original plans were to drop it already completely in the Summer op
2008. Numerous announcements have been made on the various Windows Live
blogs and in several cases it is/was also exposed in the Send/Receive errors
of the Hotmail account.

Note that using POP3 or IMAP will not enable you to use your Contacts and
Calendar stored on Hotmail and quite a few more functionalities. I'm
definitely not amongst the ones who would replace the Outlook Connector for
that. The additional would be mainly made to provide access to Live Hotmail
accounts from clients other than Microsoft Office Outlook and Windows Live
Mail.
Also note that you can already have POP3 access if you are using MSN mail
accounts.

 

[Milhouse Van Houten]

I know MS has been threatening to do this for a while, but they relented a
couple months ago. Legacy accounts have continued to have access. I hadn't
heard anything beyond that indefinite postponement.

Upon further research, I've discovered that it's actually a Win7 issue: it
still works in Vista and XP. I was completely blindsided by this, since I
wasn't expecting one small portion of Outlook not to work, and it really did
look like access had been disabled on the server end (password refused).

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Where was that announcement made?

Microsoft announced they would terminate WebDAV access to Hotmail September
27, 2004. It's definitely not a new announcement.

 

[Milhouse Van Houten]

Microsoft announced they would terminate WebDAV access to Hotmail
September 27, 2004. It's definitely not a new announcement.

No, but they obviously reversed that original announcement ages ago. The
latest announcement of its demise came in 2008, but towards the end of the
year they announced that it was postponed indefinitely. I bet we'll hear
more about it again if/when they announce POP3/IMAP for free accounts.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

No, but they obviously reversed that original announcement ages ago. The
latest announcement of its demise came in 2008, but towards the end of the
year they announced that it was postponed indefinitely. I bet we'll hear
more about it again if/when they announce POP3/IMAP for free accounts.

They've been turning off WebDAV access for legacy accounts slowly over the
last year or so.