Email Receiving Issue.

I have an 81 year old friend that I'm trying to assist. He uses AOL web based for his email and can get it on his phone as well as the desktop computer running Windows 7 professional. His issue was that when he received an attachment in AOL email, he can open some and not others. If he sends it to a Comcast address he can open all attachments. (Attachment that he demonstrated was a simple word doc). He wanted to have one email client to open all the different accounts.

He has Microsoft Office 2013 that he purchased a while back but it doesn't come with Outlook. He didn't want to spend money to upgrade and get outlook. I looked for outlook express and saw that it was no longer supported. I pulled down Microsoft Live Email and built his accounts and loaded in AOL, Gmail and Comcast accounts. It immediately pulled down all his current email. However, when he tries to send an email, it would not send any outgoing email.

First I turned off his firewall temporarily to see if it was a firewall issue and it made no difference. Then I researched on line to find some ports to change but it still didn't help. We created a Microsoft account and signed in to see if that helped and it didn't. He isn't getting an error message, it just puts the files in the outbox and that's it.

I figured with all the changes, maybe I confused the app. I closed the app and waited for a while, to restart it. When it goes to restart, it opens the send/receive progress window which shows the tasks but they are stalled. No progress being made at all. Nothing else opens in order to change the account information.

Doing more research, I see that Live Email is obsolete as well. I found a location for outlook desktop but I'm not comfortable to redo all this and uninstall the Live Mail only to find there is another reason the outgoing email isn't working for any account.

What is the email client you'd recommend for an older gentleman?
Is there a reason why the email for Gmail, Comcast and AOL using default setup are able to receive but not send?

 

I have been using EssentialPIM for more than 10 years. I have also installed it for my 76 year old mom. It's a Personal Information Manager that includes a straightforward email client. I recieve (and send) my email from both Yahoo Mail and Outlook Mail. Double-click any attachment and it will open in the default program.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/essentialpim.html