Windows 8 Mail Tile shows notifications but app shows account unavailable

Question

I, perhaps mistakenly, installed Windows 8 on my laptop to check it out. The laptop is on a windows domain. I have added my exchange account to the included mail app. On the home screen the mail tile shows emails that I know i have received but when I open the app all i see is a blank screen split into three bars, one white, one light gray, and one slightly darker gray. I made sure to do all my windows updates and app updates and now when I first open the app i see a message in the top right corner saying "[e-mail] is unavailable".

I am confused why the tile seems to work but the app doesnt. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I wound up figuring this out. I got so caught up in the fact that the tile worked that I didnt see this sooner. In the end what fixed the problem is just confirming that the exchange settings on my windows 7 machine matched the settings on my windows 8. Once I tweaked a couple settings it started working.

Two things to check if you are having similar issues: 1. Confirm that your account name is correct. In my case my exchange account name is [e-mail] and in win8 i only had user.
2. the second thing that i think made a big difference is that in outlook 2010 my exchange settings had the "Encrypt data between Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange" checkbox checked on the Security tab which seemed to equate to the "Server requires SSL" checkbox in windows 8 mail.