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Microsoft Will Stop Supporting Windows Live Mail 2012 (office.com)

An anonymous reader writes: "Windows Live Mail 2012 users are on notice: Switch to a modern email client or lose access to any Microsoft email accounts they have," reports InfoWorld. In a Thursday blog post, Microsoft informed users of their Windows Live Mail software that "the time has come for you to upgrade to a new email application." Outlook.com is moving to a new Office 365 infrastructure which uses protocols not supported by Windows Live Mail, meaning its users "will not be able to send or receive Outlook.com email from Windows Live Mail 2012 after your account is upgraded." InfoWorld points out this affects users with email addresses ending with @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com, or @msn.com.

The Outlook team's corporate vice president posted on the Office.com blog that "We recognize that changes like this can be difficult and apologize for any inconvenience this causes you..." adding that "we are confident that you will love the benefits and performance of the new Outlook.com," and recommending users switch to the Mail app on Windows. The Inquirer reports that Microsoft also emailed the software's users, suggesting that "If you are using Windows 7, you can upgrade to a newer version of Windows to enjoy the Mail app and the other benefits."

1 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What is Windows Live Mail? by ITRambo · · Score: 4, Informative

    It was a part of Windows Live, which contained a group of programs that were better than the ones built into Windows, that was upgraded to Windows Live 2011 and finally to Windows Essentials 2012, which you can still download and install today at http://windows.microsoft.com/e... . The 2012 version was pretty nice. Our shop used to install it on all the Windows 8 PC's that we sold. With webmail so popular we only load it when customers still on XP ask us to move Outlook Express over. Windows Live Mail imports the .wab contacts and the Identities email folders perfectly. Now, Microsoft had to go and break something else. They seem to be hell bent on moving casual consumers away from Windows. It really is odd behavior.