Microsoft wont support "old" outlook on new laptop.

[jimgironde]

None of these issues are caused by Virgin but they are affecting outlook Pop3.

I am the wrong side of 70 and do not wish to enter a completely different way of working.

My laptop’s charging port has packed up, it is not the battery or cable. As it was over 4 years old I bought a new one.

I subscribe to Microsoft 365 and have used Outlook since the year dot. I have a blueyonder email address which is directed via Virgin mail. When I loaded Microsoft 365 on the new laptop I was confronted with “new outlook” which doesn’t support .pst files.

Over the years my Outlook has grown as a filing system, either content or link to content, I rely upon it. I receive circa 40 emails a day with very little junk i.e., banks, insurance, investments, holidays, online purchases etc etc.

There is a toggle on “new outlook” to take you back to “classic outlook” . When it takes you back there is a Microsoft message that states it will find my email address and it does indeed find my blueyonder address! But then it turns around and says it does not exist.

I have downloaded a .PST reader and from my last outlook backup it recreates precisely what I had. So I have not lost history but I can only look at it and not work with it.

I do not wish to leave blueyonder/virgin but as I want to work offline I do not just want webmail

My old laptop does not charge anymore but the battery level is at 40%, so I probably have a couple of hours to do anything final, but everything is already backed up and transferred to new laptop, apart from email.

I have a couple of questions.

The first is has anybody else encountered this scenario i.e., losing the classic outlook when installing 365 on a new laptop and did you solve it.

The second question is how long do received emails stay online within webmail. Are they deleted after 30 days , 60 days etc? In the past I would delete web mail content every week as I had it offline. I am currently purely relying on web mail

Final question, any thoughts on a way forward for me?

Many thanks

[Adduxi]

Outlook 365 should work fine as that’s what I use.  However as you now have a new laptop, VM’s email system will now require you to create a new email address and “app” password.  Good luck with that one, many post here about failure to get it working I’m sorry to say. 

[jimgironde]

Sorry, I am not sure what you refer to when you say "outlook 365 should work fine"? It worked fine for me on my old laptop.

However, having to reinstal Microsoft 365 on new laptop forces you to use "New Outlook" which has only recently been introduced.

Are you using New Outlook?

[goslow · Accepted solution]

There are a lot of online articles about switching Microsoft 365 back to a 'Classic' look inc. YouTube how-to's. Is this the sort of thing you are trying to recreate?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QslkkcI6VeQ

A lot of the articles mention that the option to switch back to classic may only be temporary (before MS makes the 'new' change permanent). I use Outlook 2016 as a desktop app and found that the styling of that had all changed in a recent MS update a few months ago (which was nothing to do with me!). You may revert your Outlook view now, only to find MS switches it on you again in the near future.

VM's setup requirements for email are now, IMHO, quite bonkers which may possibly involve creating a third-party email account and the use of the app password as already mentioned.

These two articles might help explain more

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/broadband/manage-email-account

https://www.virginmedia.com/dpb/help/change-my-virgin-media-email-address

Once you have your email account working in Microsoft 365 I would expect you should be able to import your PST file.

As regards your old laptop charging issue, if it is the socket on the side of the laptop that is broken, many of these are actually a separate component part within the laptop (a cable with a socket on the end which attaches to the motherbaord inside). If that applies to your laptop model it might be a repair that could be carried out by a local computer shop. That might give you more time to deal with the Outlook issue or re-purpose the old laptop.

[Adduxi]

I use the Outlook that comes with Office 365 but have not switched to the “new” Outlook. Great advice from @goslow  around the completely bonkers email setup now used by VM.  My personal advice is move your email away from VM, and in fact don’t use any ISP email. Try GMail or similar. That way you are not tied to your ISP for email.

[用心棒]

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@jimgironde wrote:

⋮
The second question is how long do received emails stay online within webmail. Are they deleted after 30 days , 60 days etc? In the past I would delete web mail content every week as I had it offline. I am currently purely relying on web mail
⋮

Received emails are retained on the email server until deleted by your email client(s). In your case Virgin Media's non-standard POP3 implementation has meant such deletion requests have been ignored; this should be evident when using webmail by the unexpected number of  emails in your Inbox folder.

Be aware that

• use of Virgin Media's email server is tied to having a broadband service account with them. Should this be terminated then your email accounts will remain active for 90 days after which they should be permanently deleted
• customers are responsible for backup the content of their email accounts

Do consider migrating your email needs to a new provider to benefit from:

• no longer having to consider loss of email accounts when choosing internet service provider
• better spam filtering
• ⋮

-- 
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[jimgironde]

@goslow 

thank you for this information it is very helpful.

I had thought about getting the laptop repaired, but at the same time as the charging port started to fail, I also experienced the finger print reader packing up, together with random keyboard errors not of my making!

As long as I can retain history via the .pst reader as a last resort, I will try and get the "classic outlook" up and running and see where I go from there.

[jimgironde]

Thanks for that information. Are there any email providers that allow to download content and work offline?

[Graham_A]

As far as I understand as long as the email provider allows access to the email account via POP3/IMAP and SMTP via a third party email client you will have offline access.

[goslow]

I would be in agreement with @Adduxi and @用心棒 that setting up a new laptop would be a good point in time to also start running a new email service (with a view to migrating away from VM email and, ultimately, ditching it altogether). You could add in your VM email as well to Outlook but, at the same time, start the process of migrating away from VM email.

If you have your archive PST file, you should be able to simply open that within Outlook if you ever want to refer back to what is in it for reference. I have a few archive PST files on my PC and I only open them up as/when/if I ever need to refer to any of that info. I still have the info to hand, if needed, but it does not clutter up my day-to-day emails with a lot of archive material.

I think most email services now will tend to steer you towards using IMAP (so you can access the email service on multiple devices and synchronise your email across those devices).

There is a summary in this video about setting up Gmail in either a POP3 or IMAP configuration (if you think Gmail would suit you)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xuh5SEqNsQ

The bit where it shows you how to add an account to Outlook through the Control Panel is helpful (rather than through the 'wizard' within Outlook) because I have often found the Outlook wizard often fails to connect to an account properly and there are no discrete settings to tweak in the wizard. You need the VM app password to set up VM email in Outlook. The VM mail settings are in one of the earlier links I posted above.

The video also explains the difference between how POP3 and IMAP save your data on the computer in PST or OST files and also explained below

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/introduction-to-outlook-data-files-pst-and-ost-222eaf92-a...

If you are using IMAP and OST files, I think you can create a periodic PST backup if you wish via the 'Export' function in Outlook.

The video also shows where/how OST and PST files are stored on the computer. You might choose to have different storage files for different accounts.

As mentioned by @用心棒, VM's non-standard POP3 implementation means that if you set up your VM email on the new laptop with POP3 and a new PST file, you may well find it downloads a huge load of historic material from the VM server the first time you run it.

I have not had to set up Outlook for a long time and certainly not for VM email. Both of these things are ever-changing so the above info (going mostly from my memory) may not be 100% correct for current version of Outlook and VM email. I think the general principles are right though!