Forum Discussion

Waleee's avatar
Waleee
New Contributor II
15 days ago

Successful Email transition to Yahoo: using Thunderbird on Windows

After spending a good deal of time and effort trying to make Thunderbird get along with Yahoo, I finally figured it out. If you are reading this, you have probably already called Cox only to find out that they have washed their hands of the whole email thing and will only refer you to a phone number for Yahoo. And of course Yahoo is not set up to handle this, so you will wait in the phone queue for half of forever only to find out that they don't know how to set it up either. So in the hope that my experience may help some other poor slob, I present the below instructions, and I hope it helps. I am using the Thunderbird program to access emails on a Windows computer, however I suspect the settings will be the same for anyone using Thunderbird.

First, to transfer the emails to Yahoo and establish a webmail account, follow the directions provided by Cox as regurgitated here:

"Visit mail.yahoo.com/login and enter your complete cox.net email address, including the Cox.net suffix, as your username. Then enter your current Cox password, and accept the Yahoo Mail Terms of Service. Upon signing in, you’ll set up a new password for your new Yahoo account."

Now log out of the Yahoo webmail and open Thunderbird. I have my email accounts and corresponding folders located in a column on the left of the page. Yours may be set up differently, but mine is the default and I will base detailed instructions on that. Go to the left column and click on the line that shows your complete cox email address. If you have multiple addresses, you will need to perform the following instructions for each of them. Now look to the top right of the new page and click on "account settings". At the bottom of the settings page is the line "Outgoing Server (SMTP)", and at the far right of that line is a box that says "Edit SMTP server"; click on it. A pop-up window will open, adjust the settings as shown below:

Description: COX
Server Name: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Port: 465
Connection Security: SSL/TLS
Authentication method: OAuth2
User Name: your user name, duh
click OK

Now go back to the left hand column and click on "Server Settings". On this page the settings will be as follows:

Server Name: imap.mail.yahoo.com 
Port: 993
Connection Security: SSL/TLS
Authentication Method: OAuth2

Now close Thunderbird and reopen it. You will now be asked for a password for each of your email addresses. Use the new password that you used to set up the Yahoo webmail. Congratulations you have mail! If you want to use POP instead of IMAP I suggest you first set it up with IMAP and then go back and change the setting after you know it is working.

 

 

COX YAHOO email Thunderbird

21 Replies

Sort By
  • gidgey's avatar
    gidgey
    New Contributor
    33 minutes ago

    "Description: COX
    Server Name: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
    Port: 465
    Connection Security: SSL/TLS
    Authentication method: OAuth2
    User Name: your user name, duh - Mine keeps changing the user name to the last name I put into any of my 6 accounts. The only way it will send mail is if the correct user name is in the correct account (obviously). Why is it changing constantly?
    click OK"

  • gidgey's avatar
    gidgey
    New Contributor
    40 minutes ago

    My LAST issue is with the Thunderbird EDIT SMPT SERVER User Name constantly changing what I put in there. If the User Name isn't the same as the account I am using, it won't send the e-mail. I can change it back, but it will always change back to the last one I typed in for another account.

    How do I fix this??

  • duhmel123's avatar
    duhmel123
    New Contributor III
    2 days ago

    Definitely a learning curve to do this transition.  I have 5 accounts to 'transition'.  First account took 4 hours and only succeeded after I found this thread for setting up Thunderbird and this thread

     Yahoo Email Transition - iPhone Setup | Cox Community

    to set up iphones.  On my fourth account I am down to 20 minutes, including testing all of the devices.  Without the sharing of knowledge from smart users we would been SOL.  I feel sorry for non-tech-savy users who will struggle to figure this out.  One would think that the 'wizards' at Cox and Yahoo would write out instruction in simple English.

  • DPS's avatar
    DPS
    New Contributor
    3 days ago

    I do believe there is another issue with this transfer and email services from Yahoo.  I am bringing it up on this thread because it does deal with Thunderbird as an email client.  And, I think people who use TB use it because they like the control that TB provides.

    I noticed I was not receiving some of the emails I usually do.  I read another thread that said Yahoo was "hiding" spam emails.  I logged into the web based Yahoo to check the spam folder and there they were.  Yahoo filtered what messages it thought was spam, never making it the the inbox for Thunderbird to do any filtering.  Me being me, I selected everything and marked it as not spam and return them to the inbox, I then let TB do the filtering.  If this messes with Yahoo's algorithms, so be it.

  • duhmel123's avatar
    duhmel123
    New Contributor III
    4 days ago

    Thanks for the simple instructions but I had to make a few adjustments.  I have 6 Cox accounts and was advised only one had transferred.  I made the changes to imap for this account in TB (OK), but when I changed the SMTP address, TB changed it for all the accounts.  Since they hadn't transferred I was not able to send email from the other 5 accounts.  I changed the SMTP address to the cox server and will use the web based Yahoo mail to send emails from the transferred account for the time being.

    The one problem that I have is that in the account I transferred, now in the left colums of TB under SENT, the transferred account is not shown.  The account shows up under trash but not SENT.  This account shows up under  Junk and Trash but not Sent.  Anybody else with this problem?

     

  • kenmcmullan's avatar
    kenmcmullan
    New Contributor
    9 days ago

    I ran into problems when I got to "Authentication method:  OAuth2"

    This method doesn't appear in the drop-down menu of items.  Instead, what I have in the drop-down menu are the following:

         No Authentication
         Norman Password
         Encrypted Password 
         Kerberos/GSSAPI
         NTLM

    Has anyone else had this issue.  And are any of these an acceptable alternative?

    • nchw68's avatar
      nchw68
      New Contributor
      9 days ago

      That happened to me too. What I did was, after changing the servers for incoming and outgoing I closed TB and reopened. When I went back to the settings OAuth2 was available.

      • kenmcmullan's avatar
        kenmcmullan
        New Contributor
        9 days ago

        nchw68  Thanks for the help.  I now have OAuth2.  I'm still not quite there yet.  I also am using TB version 115.10.0.  I went back and looked at your prior post where you said that you deleted the COX account and added it again.  I don't quite understand from where you deleted and added the COX account.  In that process did you lose any emails when you deleted the account?  My failure to understand may be due to age.  I'm well past the average age of male life expectancy here in the US.  So again, I greatly appreciate your help, 

  • SADEAN's avatar
    SADEAN
    New Contributor
    10 days ago

    Hello and thank you for contributing.  

    I have a POP setup on Thunderbird and followed the supplied instructions from Yahoo about how to configure incoming/outgoing servers for POP.  This DID NOT WORK.  

    I am very reluctant to first set up as IMAP, as I have years of emails that I access regularly and it would be catastrophic to lose them.  Any suggestions on how to set up without losing my email stash?

    • Waleee's avatar
      Waleee
      New Contributor II
      10 days ago

      Hi Sadean. You bring up a good point about possibly loosing emails. From everything I've read on the internet, the settings for POP should be "pop.mail.yahoo.com" and port 995. Everything else stays the same as in my above post. I have not personally tried this, but as long as you enter it as POP and not IMAP you have nothing to lose by trying it. Please report back, it may help someone else.

  • nchw68's avatar
    nchw68
    New Contributor
    12 days ago

    This would not work for me using TB version 115.10.0. TB never prompted for a new password after restarting and I could not receive emails to the cox address. However, simply deleting the cox account and adding it again with the above settings DID work.

     

    EDIT: After re-adding the cox account I did get a sign in prompt from yahoo's webmail where I entered the new cox email password. 

  • OldBob2's avatar
    OldBob2
    New Contributor II
    13 days ago

    Thank you for the detailed and easy instructions on this conversion to Yahoo and Thunderbird!!  Your process seems easy and when it is my time I hope it goes as well...I have only received one email from Cox as yet.  I was wondering if you could TEST this process with one of the several email accounts I have with Cox when I am notified by Cox to do so but NOT the original main email account?  Another reply to this solution said they did the MAIN account and ALL the accounts went over to Yahoo. 

    Another question is--can you use the SAME password for Yahoo when you are asked to create a new password?  Just would be so much easier.

    Thank you for any help you can give to make this transition to easier that the horror stories I have read about. 

    • DPS's avatar
      DPS
      New Contributor
      12 days ago

      I think that would depend on how "strong" your original password is.  I tried the same password and Yahoo said it wasn't strong enough, so I had to come up with another.  Two special characters, numbers and capital letters and 16 characters total for Yahoo to decide if it was strong enough.

    • Waleee's avatar
      Waleee
      New Contributor II
      12 days ago

      Hi OldBob2. I had exactly the same thought as you and picked the address I was most able to live without if things went to the bad. Unfortunately, when you move one email address to Yahoo the rest will also automatically move. At that point the only access to your emails will be via the Yahoo webmail until you can get your email client, in this case Thunderbird, communicating with Yahoo. If you open TB right after setting up your Yahoo account, you will find that no emails exist there anymore. When you set up your account in Yahoo you will be required to use a password that is different from the Cox password.

      • OldBob2's avatar
        OldBob2
        New Contributor II
        12 days ago

        Thx Waleee..I was afraid if you move ANY they all go..bummer.  So I guess as long as I enter a different password in Yahoo I should be OK..and change the in/out settings in TB with the new Yahoo password I hopefully should be ok..Last time I tried to use the Authentication method: OAuth2, Thunderbird did not like it for my IMAP but hopefully that has been resolved.  Hope I dont have to change too soon and many of these pitfalls will be worked out.

  • DPS's avatar
    DPS
    New Contributor
    14 days ago

    Thanks for the write up.  I have been trying to get this to work for the last 5 hours.  Could only find FAQ's, WIKI's and Forums that were old and using outdated settings and settings that are no longer available in the software or they are using Outlook, a few months old, or people saying "Same as me" or "Me too", which really doesn't help the issue.  I then searched for the newest and found this entry.  Made the changes (OAuth2), even brought that up to Yahoo support, and I was able to send emails. 

    When I reopened Thunderbird a rather big pop-up box from Yahoo opened and wanted verification that I wanted to use a 3rd Party email client and asked for my U/N and P/W.

    One thing that is not brought up, that the Yahoo support had me try was the 3rd Party Email client or application password creation on Yahoo's security page.  It creates a password for your application other that Yahoo's app, and support had me enter that password at one time also.  I don't know if that has/had any effect on this issue.

    I made the mistake of "testing" the transfer with my primary account email, and when you do that it automatically transfers any email addresses set up under that account.

    THANK YOU for your write up.  It most definitely helped this poor slob.

    • Waleee's avatar
      Waleee
      New Contributor II
      12 days ago

      Hi DPS. I too went to Yahoo's security page and created an app password, but when I entered it in Thunderbird, I got the invalid password popup. So while that may have set the stage for me entering the Yahoo password that I had initially created, I rather doubt that it did anything useful. If anyone finds that using this "app password" was necessary,  I hope they will add a comment here to help other folks. And I wouldn't mind understanding it as well.