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bethmac's avatar
bethmac
New Contributor
2 months ago
Solved

Using Yahoo email in Mac OS mail app

I have created my Yahoo account in my Mac OS mail, but I can't seem to bring it online-attempts to change it from offline to online are futile.  

Anyone with a Mac able to help?  I tried Yahoo chat, the AI bot is useless and if I want help from Yahoo I have to pay.  

I can't stand Yahoo in the browser.  I can't see the text very well b/c my eyes are old now.  The ads are annoying and I will drop Cox before I pay for Yahoo premium.  

We were looking for a reason to switch to the new Verizon 5g box.  Might be now.

Thank you in advance.

 

 

 

  • Lyndonb95's avatar
    Lyndonb95
    2 months ago

    I posted this on Reddit and am reporting here for all:  

    As many of us are going through a transition to Yahoo as our email provider I want to offer some tips on what is needed to make Yahoo email work with the native Mail app on Mac. I spent 3 hours yesterday on this and found that very few Yahoo CSR's know anything at all about the Apple OS. So in the interest of saving others from that frustration, here is what I learned.

    First a caveat--the transition for iphone is straightforward and Yahoo has tips as does Cox on their web site about the transition for iOS. Just add a new email account in settings as you normally would selecting the type as Yahoo. It is simple, easy and requires you do nothing except have your username and the new yahoo password you created--should work out of the box but consult the Cox notes which does have guidance for iPhone and Android mobile users (although they try to guide you into using the Yahoo app and the Yahoo web mail). I didn't want another app--I wanted to use the Apple supplied native app on my Mac so I tried --it did not work the same way and this is what I found.

    These instructions are exclusively for Mail on the Mac OS.

    1. Do not, and I mean this strenuously, do not simply add a new account by selecting Yahoo as the email type. Instead, open system preferences--Internet Accounts and select the generic Mail Account. When presented with the dialog box, deselect 'automatic' so that you can manually enter the imap and smtp information. Yahoo's help page on their web site has a section devoted to the correct info. https://help.yahoo.com/kb/imap-server-settings-yahoo-mail-sln4075.html
    2. I have re-creacted the info here:
    3. Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server
      Server - imap.mail.yahoo.com
      Port - 993
      Requires SSL - Yes
      Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server
      Server - smtp.mail.yahoo.com
      Port - 465 or 587
      Requires SSL - Yes
      Requires authentication - Yes
      Your login info
      Email address - Your full email address (name@domain.com)
      Password - Generate App Password
      Requires authentication - Yes
    4. When it comes to the password, do not use the password you created for Yahoo email--that is fine to use on the phone but not here. Instead you must go up to the Yahoo web site--login with your new Yahoo password. Then select your account and you'll be prompted to login again (I know--you did that already to get into your webmail but that is how they do it), and then navigate to security just below the header, select that. Scroll down and on the right hand side you'll see an option to Generate an App Password. Select that and you'll be given the option to create and copy a unique password--and that is the password you want to paste into the password field on your mac. Double check that the smtp and imap accounts are the correct Yahoo (and not cox) accounts. Save it and you should be good to go--unless of course you need to finesse the port selection for outgoing email. Good idea to send and receive a test email to another account to be sure everything is working as it should.
    5. Cox --to my knowledge does not show these instructions anywhere in their notes, and in my experience many Yahoo CSR's don't know this either--they'll waste a lot of your time and won't solve the issue--so be warned. The Yahoo folks are very nice but it does not seem as if they were alerted to the idea that Mac users might be calling in with questions.

    I hope this helps members of this community who are mac users. I do not believe Unix or Win users have to do this --I just wanted to get mail working again so did not take the time to explore further so if you are one just ignore this post. Cheers.

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  • Catherine64's avatar
    Catherine64
    New Contributor
    2 months ago

    I couldn't agree more.  

    I have gone through this process on two separate Macs, one works fine and one only receives.  We took that one to a local computer repair yesterday and they had already had over two hundred customers with the same issue.  By the way, 200 is a lot in this small community.  They suggested that we wait it out over the weekend and see if they can work out the kinks.  So then my thought was "Who at Cox is going to be working on this over a holiday weekend?"  Certainly not the dim bulb that hatched this plan.  

    • LTB's avatar
      LTB
      New Contributor
      2 months ago

      Yours already transitioned? Were you "prompted" to go to Yahoo? I'm still receiving my email via my regular Cox mail app.

       

      • rbeforee's avatar
        rbeforee
        New Contributor II
        16 days ago

        My mother and I are on the same cox account yet we were sent the e-mail update notice to our individual addresses many days apart. So, they aren’t even necessarily transitioning all addresses under the same account at the same time.

        Perhaps they are following some hidden sort order that we cannot see. But it is a good thing it is being trickled out since we needed Lyndonb95 to solve it for us first :D 

    • Lyndonb95's avatar
      Lyndonb95
      New Contributor III
      2 months ago

      It does seem as if Cox or Yahoo or both failed to QA their solution for Mac users--not the first time the Mac community has been orphaned.  Even when I did find the answers in a yahoo support page--they were lacking in sufficient detail for the average user to follow.  That's why Imde the post--we have to stick together an save ourselves.

       

      • Hoozere's avatar
        Hoozere
        New Contributor II
        25 days ago

        Thank you so much for your help. I worked for hours on this until I found your solution which was the only thing that worked. There are so many Mac users having problems on all social media.

        If only Cox would provide your instructions on their help page. My cox email is one of the major reasons I didn’t switch providers. I wonder what will happen if I now move to another internet provider.

  • Lyndonb95's avatar
    Lyndonb95
    New Contributor III
    2 months ago

    I posted this on Reddit and am reporting here for all:  

    As many of us are going through a transition to Yahoo as our email provider I want to offer some tips on what is needed to make Yahoo email work with the native Mail app on Mac. I spent 3 hours yesterday on this and found that very few Yahoo CSR's know anything at all about the Apple OS. So in the interest of saving others from that frustration, here is what I learned.

    First a caveat--the transition for iphone is straightforward and Yahoo has tips as does Cox on their web site about the transition for iOS. Just add a new email account in settings as you normally would selecting the type as Yahoo. It is simple, easy and requires you do nothing except have your username and the new yahoo password you created--should work out of the box but consult the Cox notes which does have guidance for iPhone and Android mobile users (although they try to guide you into using the Yahoo app and the Yahoo web mail). I didn't want another app--I wanted to use the Apple supplied native app on my Mac so I tried --it did not work the same way and this is what I found.

    These instructions are exclusively for Mail on the Mac OS.

    1. Do not, and I mean this strenuously, do not simply add a new account by selecting Yahoo as the email type. Instead, open system preferences--Internet Accounts and select the generic Mail Account. When presented with the dialog box, deselect 'automatic' so that you can manually enter the imap and smtp information. Yahoo's help page on their web site has a section devoted to the correct info. https://help.yahoo.com/kb/imap-server-settings-yahoo-mail-sln4075.html
    2. I have re-creacted the info here:
    3. Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server
      Server - imap.mail.yahoo.com
      Port - 993
      Requires SSL - Yes
      Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server
      Server - smtp.mail.yahoo.com
      Port - 465 or 587
      Requires SSL - Yes
      Requires authentication - Yes
      Your login info
      Email address - Your full email address (name@domain.com)
      Password - Generate App Password
      Requires authentication - Yes
    4. When it comes to the password, do not use the password you created for Yahoo email--that is fine to use on the phone but not here. Instead you must go up to the Yahoo web site--login with your new Yahoo password. Then select your account and you'll be prompted to login again (I know--you did that already to get into your webmail but that is how they do it), and then navigate to security just below the header, select that. Scroll down and on the right hand side you'll see an option to Generate an App Password. Select that and you'll be given the option to create and copy a unique password--and that is the password you want to paste into the password field on your mac. Double check that the smtp and imap accounts are the correct Yahoo (and not cox) accounts. Save it and you should be good to go--unless of course you need to finesse the port selection for outgoing email. Good idea to send and receive a test email to another account to be sure everything is working as it should.
    5. Cox --to my knowledge does not show these instructions anywhere in their notes, and in my experience many Yahoo CSR's don't know this either--they'll waste a lot of your time and won't solve the issue--so be warned. The Yahoo folks are very nice but it does not seem as if they were alerted to the idea that Mac users might be calling in with questions.

    I hope this helps members of this community who are mac users. I do not believe Unix or Win users have to do this --I just wanted to get mail working again so did not take the time to explore further so if you are one just ignore this post. Cheers.

    • GoldenHill's avatar
      GoldenHill
      New Contributor
      14 days ago

      Thanks so much for taking the time to put this information here!  I wasted so much time trying to get Yahoo to work on my mac that I was completely fed up.  I would never have known to do this process without your help.

    • rbeforee's avatar
      rbeforee
      New Contributor II
      16 days ago

      Is anyone with an excessively large inbox (well over 10K unread messages) able to get all of their messages into the MacOS Mail app after following the migration instructions provided so kindly by Lyndonb95 ? Mail seems to have stopped downloading the messages and while the date ranges are the same on the Yahoo webmail and Mail app, there are thousands of missing messages on the Mail app, both read and unread.

      I mean, I sorted both inboxes by date, oldest first, and they both show the same “oldest message” but there are not the same number of messages. (Sorted by newest first and the same e-mails are first on each) So the messages that are missing are somewhere in between, and I haven’t figured out yet how to easily determine what’s missing.

      This is on the order of 26K total/13K unread in webmail (and in Mac Mail when it was using the Cox imap servers) vs only getting around 9K total/5K unread messages in Mac Mail when using the Yahoo imap servers. (I have ample available hard drive space available, but do not know if there is some secret limit somewhere that I can uncap or some such) Since the messages are still there in the totals on the webmail, I assume I just need to figure out why so many are not downloading, but without knowing which are missing I’m not sure where to start looking for the problem  

      Any ideas, fellow Mac users? 
      This user does not intend to use webmail. They are devoted to the MacOS Mail app ;)

      And yes, we are both working on cleaning up our own inboxes but it is a lengthy process when it’s this far out of control. Don’t bother berating us about that. lol

       

      tia. Cheers,

      Timbrely

    • Twaisanen's avatar
      Twaisanen
      New Contributor
      16 days ago

      I've used this solution to get cox.net email on by MacBook Air. But the same steps fail in setting up a cox.net account on my wife's iPad Pro (running iPadOS 17.4.1).
      I get "No password provided for "Cox". Got to Mail Account Settings and enter a password." ["Cox" is the name of the account.]
      I've removed and repasted the app password but get the same results.
      What might be wrong and how should I proceed?

      • rbeforee's avatar
        rbeforee
        New Contributor II
        16 days ago

        This elaborate process is only for MacOS, not iPadOS, or iOS, or VisionOS (presumably) You only need the actual account password, not an “app password” as well. Apparently Yahoo doesn’t consider the handheld device “apps” to be the same entity as desktop/laptop “apps” even when, from the user’s experience, they are essentially the same. 

        If I remember, I set up my iPhone by adding a Yahoo account and using my cox e-mail address and new yahoo/cox mail account password. (Again, not a “Generated App” password this time) Just make sure the IMAP settings are for yahoo servers not cox. (smtp.mail.yahoo.com not smtp.cox.com . You can find the correct IMAP server names in the solution on this post) 

        You shouldn’t need the “Generated App Password” again unless you set up another 3rd-party e-mail application on your Mac computer (MacOS). “3rd Party” meaning not the Yahoo Mail app.