Important information about your email service

Many users of Windows Live Mail 2012 have received an email under this heading from the Outlook Team advising them of the changes that are taking place at Outlook.com as accounts are migrated to the same platform as that used by Office 365. Apart from advice to switch to using the built-in Mail apps on Windows 8.1 and 10, users are instructed to apply the patch KB3093594. A few points to note:

1. The change means that migrated accounts can no longer be synchronized using the old DeltaSync protocol. To synchronize these accounts, users can set up the account again to use IMAP. This will enable mail messages and folders to synchronize, but not the calendar and contacts.
2. The patch enables support for Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) to be used instead of DeltaSync in Windows Live Mail 2012 on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 (see System requirements on the download page).
3. Mail synchronization errors can often be cleared by removing the account, closing down the program and waiting a few minutes, then re-launching it and adding the account back again.
4. We don't know what is going to happen with Windows Live Mail 2009 on XP and 2011 on Vista. It is clear that users will no longer be able to sign in with a migrated account to synchronize contacts and calendar, and they won't be able to synchronize mail messages and folders using DeltaSync. Whether the programs will continue to work in other respects (e.g. as a POP3, IMAP and NNTP client) remains to be seen.
5. Apart from this question of synchronizing mail, calendars and contacts with a Microsoft Email account, there is no change now or in the foreseeable future for Windows Live Mail 2012. Mail accounts configured to use POP3 or IMAP will continue to work as before, the default calendar and contacts lists will still be available and the other functions - RSS feeds and newsgroups - continue as before.