Outlook.com "Sync Email" settings - "Unable to load these settings. Please try again later."

Scope: Outlook.com sync email pane not available

I reported this problem to Microsoft Support.

Here is the relevant part of the answer:

"Although syncing a third party email is no longer possible, accessing the sync window should not be an issue. Upon checking with the level two team we got to know that there has been an ongoing issue with users not being able to access this window. Please rest assured as the engineering team is already working on it and a fix will be released soon."

received on Thu 3rd March, exactly a week ago, and of course the problem pre-dates that by some weeks. Still not working. No sign of urgency there.

So: The sync facility has been removed.

However the other functions on that pane, such as setting the default FROM: address, should be restored.

It is not clear if we can remove the sync'd email accounts when the sync pane is restored.

As other posters note, if there are problems accessing these accounts (eg password change) we need to remove them.

Mine are still working, but for how long?

Removing the sync facility is a major drawback and it is difficult to understand the motivation here.

3/9/2022 My connected account after about 12 hours finally started receiving emails again but still no luck on ever being able to modify the settings.

For anyone who has to add or modify an email it looks like your going to have to switch to the Microsoft Mail app and here's a link I found on how to add

https://chemicloud.com/kb/article/how-to-easily-setup-a-pop3-email-account-in-windows-10-mail/

But I would like to stress what IDIOTS are working on Microsoft's Outlook platform. If you're not going to support the feature then give a message that says that and points the users to a webpage that explains it. Not a try again later message if the Sync Email settings are never going to be available.

Also I'm a commercial software developer for 20+ years and I can tell you the total lines of code required to handle syncing POP and IMAP emails is probably less than 1000. That includes the code required to store your settings in the database. All the heavy coding is done by the existing Microsoft Windows dll files and hasn't really changed in decades. There was absolutely no valid reason I can think of for removing the connected accounts or Sync email from Outlook.com.

Nope, I have premium and it does not work anymore.

I saw this in the below thread. Are they now saying we have to pay to have gmail connected to our outlook.com inbox? Surely not!?

"Premium customers can add their Google Mail and Calendar accounts as an additional mailbox."

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-your-other-email-accounts-to-outlook-com-c5224df4-5885-4e79-91ba-523aa743f0ba

Yes this is a problem for all of us here. Weeks without a resolution