You should be able to be simultaneously logged into your AOL account (through a web browser, I presume), '''and''' use any e-mail program to send and receive e-mail with your AOL e-mail address. They don't interfere with each other on your computer. The only thing I can think of is possibly a setting in AOL so they will only allow one connection to AOL account at a time. Such a setting was common long ago for security reasons, but in this modern era, people often use multiple programs and multiple devices to simultaneously access the same things on the Internet. Thus such a setting is obsolete now. I think you need to ask AOL about this.