I am posting because this is supposed to get me in touch with the moderators who are supposed to be able to solve the problem.  But there are a lot of threads like this and I have yet to read one that ends with "That worked"  They  usually end with "and so I switched to Gmail."  This is really sad, thousand of tech support people, thousands of moderators, but they can't actually do anything for you, because the engineers who seem to be attached to using outdated technology on the servers for "non-business people" i.e. not corporate accounts that can't seem to figure out that the whole point of a cloud is to sync to multiple devices. Oh and it is not as though there is some limit to the number of devices you can sync to -- once this error occurs you cannot sync to any device ever again or so it seems. 

The posted solution -- use pop "temporarily."  Meaning until we fix the problem, which was supposed to be March (5 months ago). 

What the engineers in Redmond don't seem to understand is that the marketing guys have been trying to sell "outlook.com" to the people who want to use a private free e-mail for business (the folks that didn't think "hotmail" was dignified enough)  For those of us that use our outlook for business type things, five months is NOT temporary and syncing on a pop server does NOT set up my calendar and, thus, the whole thing is rendered useless.

It's almost enough to make to Apple.  It is enough to push most people back to Gmail.  Unfortunately for me.  I had switched back to using outlook because there were things I couldn't do with Gmail that I can only do with outlook. I mean "could" only do with outlook.

I really need to be able to use outlook 2013 on at least one machine and then have my phone and my surface sync as well.  This is not too much to ask and it is not too much to ask that we be told whatever the limit of "too many devices" is so that we can stay below it. 

Using "pop" temporarily won't even get me through the Day, so that is just irritating.

Also, being told to delete the account on all my devices, ignores the fact that it is my microsoft account and cannot be deleted from my surface or my phone without very serious consequences.

If the engineers in Redmond don't start pulling their heads out of their behinds and start realizing that people expect microsoft products to work with other microsoft products, all those naysayers in the blogosphere will be proven correct.  Sad really.  I actually like windows 8 and windows phone 8.

THE OPTIONS AT THE END OF THIS POST EXEMPLIFY THE CLUELESS NESS.  Choose one product ONLY.  (this issue is caused by the fact that Outlook.com doesn't play well with Outlook -- which product IS the problem? , mobile version or not (choose ONE)  The problem is with both.  Outlook.com started not syncing with the desktop, spread to the surface, landed on the phone.

I'm guessing the microsoft engineers are still using pocket calendars and pencils, 'cause they don't seem to be using their devices the way that claim they are.