Some of the posts suggest that if you’ve activated “2-step verification” on your AOL account that you’ll need to generate and use an “app password” to access your email from a legacy email client. What’s more interesting is that AOL apparently is not blasting out this new feature to all users at the same time because my Microsoft Outlook 365 client continues to work fine while my wife and many others are having to generate an “app password” to get their email flowing again. Verizon/AOL accounts require an AOL “App Password” to be used as the password for the account configured in Outlook or in any email client (iPhone, Android, Thunderbird, Outlook, etc) It seems she’s not the only person with issues as there are numerous posts on numerous message boards all within the past 30 days with dozens if not hundreds of people reporting the same issue. You would think I’ve learned by now to not jump to conclusions. The loving wife had this same issue and I wrongly assumed end user error. Within the past 30 days I’ve heard and seen a number of issues with people connecting to their AOL inbox from traditional email clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird or even the native email clients on iPhone and Android.

I’m a Verizon FiOS customer and was migrated to AOL back in 2017. What is going on with AOL and Microsoft Outlook?

Verizon email setup for outlook