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I am reposting the instructions for using the native Mail app for Mac with Yahoo --updated with thanks to all who have reported anomalies and needed further assistance. Hopefully these updated notes will clarify any remaining exceptions.
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 several hours 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 your email settings as you normally would selecting the type as Yahoo. Enter your Cox email address and the Yahoo password you created to access your Yahoo/Cox webmail. It should work out of the box
These instructions are exclusively for Mail on the Mac OS
- 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—(it is under the menu labeled MAIL and select the plus sign at the bottom of the list of email accounts to add a new account. That will bring up a dialog box showing types of email accounts. Chose the generic Other Mail Account.
- When presented with the dialog box, enter your Cox email address but do not enter the Yahoo password you created. Instead, sign into your Yahoo webmail account through your browser and choose account info. You will be prompted to sign in again and when you have done so you’ll be taken to a new page. The third item from the left in the subhead says SECURITY. Select that page. Halfway down that page on the right hand side you will see an option to “Generate and Manage app passwords”. Select that option and you will be taken to yet another page and prompted to give your app a name—type in Mail and then select the button below to generate password.
- Copy the password. That is what you want to enter in the Mail for mac dialog box.
- When you have entered the account and password and select save you may get lucky and the system will begin repopulating your email or more likely it will tell you that it cannot verify the name and/or password—that is because it is still missing some information.
- Close the Mail Preferences dialog and then open it again. Select the new email account you just created from the list on the right. The subhead should display an item labelled Server Settings—that’s is where the missing information needs to be added.
- These are the settings you need to enter:
- Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server: imap.mail.yahoo.com
Port - 993
Requires SSL - Yes
Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Port - 465
Requires SSL - Yes
Requires authentication - Yes
Your login info
Email address - Your full cox email address (yourname@cox.net)
Password - The App Password you generated in both incoming and outgoing
Requires authentication - Yes - Save it and you should be good to go. Good idea to send and receive a test email to another account to be sure everything is working as it should.
- Some have found that the incoming email works at this point but outgoing does not. If that occurs change the outgoing server to the following: apple.smtp.mail.yahoo.com and save —your outgoing email should now work as well.
- KarenL7 months agoNew Contributor III
These are exactly the procedures I followed. It works great except if you have over 10k emails in your original cox account, not all transfer to Apple Mail on new email. Similarly, with iPhone except limited to 3k there.
When I spoke with Yahoo support they said it was an Apple issue and not their problem. That is why I say the testing done between Cox and Yahoo was inadequate. They obviously did not test large accounts with Apple products.- coxiscrap17 months agoNew Contributor II
KarenL, I do not believe Cox or Yahoo tested anything at all before rolling out this horrendous transition to Yahoo mail.
- KarenL7 months agoNew Contributor III
If any testing was done, it was marginal.
- Lyndonb957 months agoContributor
If you have that many messages stored on servers instead of locally you will run into that problem with almost any email provider. I'm not defending Yahoo or Cox, but if you need access to those messages the standard practice is to create mailboxes and store them locally. Most public email services are based on a store (for a set period of time) after forwarding model. Corporate Exchange users can set their own rules by deciding how much server capacity they want to devote but public services like Yahoo, Gmail and Cox set limits or the server requirements would be too costly to support for any company. Having said that you can retrieve any mail in those local mailboxes by accessing the plist files.
- KarenL7 months agoNew Contributor III
Thanks. I do have them stored locally as backups also. Never had a problem with Cox or Gmail.
- KarenL7 months agoNew Contributor III
I should add that I am receiving new emails fine and outgoing also works. It’s simply the transfer of existing emails from old Cox that is bad. I used Apple mail with my old Vox account and never had a size limitation. The issue lies with Yahoo and Apple relationship in my opinion.
- Lyndonb957 months agoContributor
Yes, quite a few folks have run into this issue of a storage limit. I don't know whether this happened when Cox migrated the files or when Yahoo ingested them but clearly files were either truncated or lost. Having spent years in IT I sympathize. It is, however, a reminder about the need for backups--and email hygiene. I use local mailboxes and store about 1.5k of old messages --which I routinely review and purge as appropriate.
- coxiscrap17 months agoNew Contributor II
"Just add a new email account in your email settings as you normally would selecting the type as Yahoo. Enter your Cox email address and the Yahoo password you created to access your Yahoo/Cox webmail. It should work out of the box "
I can vouch that this works fine for Android mail app users as well. Give up trying to modify server settings to match Yahoo's settings. You have to create a new account, choose Yahoo, enter credentials you created initially for Yahoo and the rest is automatic as far as configuring the mail app with servers settings and such. I first had to remove my existing account from my phone's mail app because it recognized the new account used the same email address and wouldn't allow it. I used IMAP for all our devices so my email data on now Yahoo's servers showed up on my now new Yahoo mail account on my phone. Those using POP may have a different experience. Your new account may not show any of your previous emails that were on the phone previously.
- laceyroo7 months agoNew Contributor
Thank you for these detailed steps. It worked!!!
Will I ever need that App-generated password again?
I now have THREE passwords...the Cox password (to get into my Cox account), the Yahoo password (to get into my Yahoo account), and the App-generated password.
- Lyndonb957 months agoContributor
No. The app generated password is a one time use. Should you ever need to redo the account you will have to generate a new password. The other two you most definitely need
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