Which server addresses are you using exactly?

Well, I guess it was a system error, because returning home 8 hours later, it's working as per normal.

Thanks for your response!

Yes, there most likely was a problem with AOL servers at that time because a few other AOL/Verizon/Yahoo users posted about the same issue at about the same time you did. It won't hurt to double-check your settings and confirm you are using the ones given here https://help.aol.com/articles/how-do-i-set-up-other-email-applications-to-send-and-receive-my-verizon-net-mail

Note: it as advisable to use your full email address as the username for incoming and outgoing server authentication, that is, include the @verizon.net part to avoid sign-in problems.

Thank you Stans,

I did check my settings and they are correct according to the AOL guidelines. I am using the POP3 configuration. I considered changing to IMAP (more efficient?) but was told I'd have to delete my archive of emails so I figured "if it's not broke, etc."

One thing is that under Account Settings I have @verizon.net shown for both incoming and outgoing servers, but when I go to Saved Logins, it only allows that part for the outgoing server and not the incoming server.

It should be in full. You can manually edit the username in the saved login. It does allow the @verizon.net part, I just checked. What happens when you press Enter after editing it? Do you get some error message or it just reverts to what it was before the changes?

As regards IMAP vs POP, you can keep using POP if it serves your needs just fine, even though IMAP has its advantages over POP and is the intended successor to POP. POP is the older protocol of the two, and it has its use cases that cannot be served well by IMAP. For example, private domain hosting providers often impose a limit to how much storage space you can use on their server. This often affects how many messages can be stored on the server at any given time. The more storage space you need, the more you'd have to pay the hosting provider for it. POP would work better in such a situation, by downloading the messages from the server and deleting the copy on the server, freeing up space on the server and letting you store those messages on your own storage devices. Privacy enthusiasts also love that idea because their confidential emails are not left on the server. It's like a post office mailbox whereby once you've fetched your mail from the post office box, no other copy of the same mail remains at the post office box. Retrieval is one way, and if you lose that one copy, well...

You can read more about IMAP and POP via a Google search of "IMAP vs POP" to better understand what each protocol entails and how they differ from each other, then make an informed decision. Since your mailbox is hosted on a public (AOL.com) domain and not a custom/private domain, storage space is not that much of a problem, so you wouldn't need to store your emails on your own storage devices. Yahoo allocates 1TB of storage space for free user account, and since it's merged with AOL, I believe the limit is the same for AOL/Verizon accounts like yours. Other public domain email providers like Gmail also offer generous storage space for their free mailboxes. I trust the storage of my emails to Google, Outlook, Yahoo/AOL because they have fail-over measures in place that greatly reduce the chance of losing your emails as a result hardware failures, disasters and the like, unlike storing the only copies of your emails on your computers storage which can suffer loss of functionality and data at any time, with or without warning! Privacy enthusiasts would frown heavily upon trusting such internet giants with their privacy, so it's also a matter of personal preference.