Loss of POP3 access for @btconnect.com email addresses

BT have really let us down on this issue.

Forwarding emails to other addresses is only a partial solution as I have now found that forwrded emails are not removed from the webmail service so I constantly have to go into the webmail account and delete redundant messages otherwise the 1Gb store becomes full.

What a mess. Thanks BT

Thank you, David.

I have resolved all my issues. I installed Outlook 2021 a few weeks ago. I uploaded .pst emails on BTconnect going back to 2010. Then I backed everything up again. I set up an Outlook account, which was installed immediately and painlessly. I then disabled the BTconnect account from sending or receiving emails within Outlook 21. I then set up the BTConnect webmail to forward to the new Outlook address. Everything is working and I can toggle between the two addresses on Outlook and also have two diaries displayed. I have sent 50 most important clients and colleagues details of the new address and over time I will migrate everyone to the new address.

BT has been a disgrace. I got a message today advising that my cut-off date will be 8th June. Even if they had advised people about the facility to divert BTConnect addresses that would have helped. How an IT person thought that webmail and a phone app could replace email clients is beyond me.

Thanks for the support and information everyone has provided. I will sleep better tonight.

I'm very late to this and now need to work out way forward as I use Outlook on Office Professional Plus 2019 so I could keep all my email, BTconnect and business domain emails in one place and keep local records of important emails in subfolders, and once POP emails were downloaded I deleted from BT server. I discovered yesterday that BTconnect emails could no longer be downloaded into Outlook on my desktop and my colleagues who use Mac Mail had same issue) I have installed the iphone app to collect emails in the short term and can still log in to use webmail version but this is not a practical solution. So far I have disabled collection via Destop outlook as I kept getting authentication error messages when it couldn't connect to the defunct BT POP server.

I will try and follow the steps in your email above and first back up all my pst files. Do you set up a outlook email here https://outlook.live.com/, so I can replicate all the Btconnect emails I have on the business account? Is it the free account I need to sign up for to retrieve into Outlook desktop?

I am still a bit confused on this whole POP issue, I called BT Business email support and they told me it was all Microsoft fault who had ditched POP, but my Desktop outlook is still collecting our domain emails which are also all POP, but at least those could be switched to IMAP if those are forced to change, although guessing that would mean leaving all emails on those providers servers too?

I think BT Business expect all companies to have IT expertise at their fingertips if not inhouse staff, many small businesses just don't have this capability so I feel really let down. At the very least they should be providing a non tech step by step guide to a outlook email workaround for clients that use Desktop Outlook rather than saying too bad you just have to use webmail or mobile phone app.

I would appreciate any

What surprises me is that they haven't addressed elimination of basic auth and replacing it with modern auth the same way Yahoo and Gmail have which is to offer Multi-factor Authentication (MFA/2FA). With MFA turned on, users are allowed to generate an Application Specific Password to keep their favorite email clients running.

"MS is killing POP3 on @btconnect.com tomorrow."

I'm not finding any articles on the Internet stating this, can you provide a link from BT stating this? Microsoft is removing basic authentication, not POP3 access to anything.

Dear A_525 MORGAN

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you!

Based on your description, I already have a general understanding of your problem, but in order to help you better, I still need to gather more information to narrow down the problem:

• Regarding the download you mentioned, I would like to check if you mean that you want to back up the data files of your POP account in advance? If so, please kindly refer to: Export or backup email, contacts, and calendar to an Outlook .pst file - Microsoft Support
• Also, if you are using Outlook Desktop Client, please kindly try logging in to outlook web app with your pop3 account to check if the same error occurs?
• Are you receiving some error messages or error codes? If so, please also kindly try to share the screenshot with me so that I can do more research and testing, thank you.
• Has your Outlook Desktop Client been updated to the latest version? If not, please kindly check the results after updating, thank you.

Please kindly believe that after receiving the feedback I need, I will do more research and testing as soon as possible to better help you, thank you in advance!

Thanks in advance for your understanding! Your patience and cooperation will be highly appreciated. Hope you all the best!

Sincerely,

Kerry Chen | Microsoft Community Moderator