Looks to me like your account was not created correctly, or there is some magic setting in outlook you have to tick to use the account as IMAP. I suggest you ask them what the problem is.

I asked microsoft and they said because it is a problem i am having with pop peeper and thunderbird, I should ask them instead.

I even tried closing my account and reopening. So that should have reset the setup issue right?

As it is a problem connecting to their servers, it is their problem. The fact you have two different software packages identifying the issue is theirs. They best provide the service they claim to and answer the question.

Or admit that outlook.com is actually broken, which I think it is. Their pop does not work correctly. Sign in works or not at random. The only thing their site is good for really is using with a browser. But that is their intention.

I suggest you try a provider like GMX instead. Their stuff just works.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail-oapps/pop-peeper-thunderbird-open-all-my-hotmail-acs-so/d9aef80b-1e8d-41cb-9a63-de90db0d0f12?tm=1456351723587&auth=1

^^Read the last reply by microsoft

I could not help it, I replied to the poor deluded nitwit

Matt said

I could not help it, I replied to the poor deluded nitwit

lol he got a walloping. Thanks for supporting me Matt!

Okay so I logged in again for the first time since posting.

Thunderbird accepted the password.

Pop Peeper finally gave me a useful message: pop disabled in options on outlook.com. I logged on to outlook.com, clicked on the gear icon (top left) and then scrolled over to "Connect devices and apps with POP". Pop was disabled. I enabled it. Pop Peeper started working with my new account!!!!

I am curious as to why thunderbird magically began accepting my password without me doing anything.

Also curious why pop peeper didn't override the website pop setup like thunderbird. But glad that it informed me where to look for next time.

So thank you to all who helped!!!!

Two issues with outlook that poped into my head when ?I read your reply.

1. They encourage long and complicated passwords, but do not allow their use in POP/IMAP connections, instead limiting you to I think 8 characters or numbers.

2. It might be Thunderbird is using IMAP. IMAP is not affected by the POP setting. It is a hang over from when they begrudgingly allowed POP because they ran out of reasons not to. (And the deprecated outlook express)

In this case though, I thing your MVP on Microsoft's support site might have had a hand in something changing.

Matt said

In this case though, I thing your MVP on Microsoft's support site might have had a hand in something changing.

Honestly, I think that's what happened. Because like I said I hadn't changed the password. I changed nothing and suddenly it worked. And when I got the pop peeper error, I think that's where your other idea came into play.

I actually didn't know that microsoft mvps had the privileges to handle my account.

harvestthesouls said

Matt said

In this case though, I thing your MVP on Microsoft's support site might have had a hand in something changing.

Honestly, I think that's what happened. Because like I said I hadn't changed the password. I changed nothing and suddenly it worked. And when I got the pop peeper error, I think that's where your other idea came into play.

I actually didn't know that microsoft mvps had the privileges to handle my account.

They probably do not. but they do have email the addresses of folk inside Microsoft who do. Just as I have an address book with Mozilla and Thunderbird people in it.