Successful Email transition to Yahoo: using Thunderbird on Windows

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  Could only find FAQ's, WIKI's and Forums that were old and using outdated settings and settings that are no longer available in the software or they are using Outlook, a few months old, or people saying "Same as me" or "Me too",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.

for mac mail app on imac, I had to only edit the incoming and outgoing mail servers information for the "cox account" in the "accounts" section of the imac system preferences. If I tried to add a new account either Yahoo! or Mail or any, it didn't work. Also, with this method I got to keep my message organization and it's pretty seamless. IE. no Adding accounts, etc.

1 So I had to login to yahoo webmail with cox email address, accept terms and make a new password for accessing webmail at mail.yahoo.com. Then goto settings while signed in to yahoo webmail and "generate app password" and name it cox mail or something and click generate. then copy the generated password for mac mail cox.

2 Then I had to open Mail app on imac. From the "Mail" dropdown menu at the top" i chose "settings". 

3 I made sure the cox.net email account was selected on the left side of settings. Typed the generated password on the Account information screen (and changed the username to include Cox.net) Then chose "server settings" on right side tab menu. Then updated the incoming and outgoing servers from the imap.cox.net or whatever it was to imap.mail.yahoo.com and unchecked automatic for ports and double checked the ssl and port # settings (shown in picture)

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@cox.net)
• username - name@cox.net
• Password - USE Generated App Password from yahoo webmail settings here!
• Requires authentication - Yes

The password for both incoming and outgoing will not be the webmail password setup at mail.yahoo.com when you first accepted the terms of service. That password is for logging into yahoo WEBMAIL.  You have to create a special password while you are logged into yahoo webmail, and choose "settings" then look for "generate app password" name it cox email password or something and copy the generated password from yahoo  webmail settings. Then paste or type the generated password into the password field under "account information" tab shown in the picture below of imac mac mail "mail dropdown menu">"settings" for imap and for smtp 

The username must include Cox.net. Automatically manage unchecked.

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. 

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. 

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?

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?

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?

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.

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.

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??