ChrisJ2 -
Thanks for sticking with me. Getting closer. Reminder - Windows 11, T-bird 115.11.0 64 bit.
I have 5 Cox.net accounts, and all have transferred successfully to Yahoo. I am now trying to get them into T-bird. I followed your App Password procedure to get the first account into T-bird. It worked easily and I was happy, so I set out to get the second account into T-bird. I used the same settings as for the first account, of course, but encountered a problem with the SMTP entry. The SMTP part of the window defaults to Default Server, and there are no other choices. The Default Server window contained the account name for the first account (the one I just successfully set up), which of course doesn't work for the second account. So in the SMTP window, I EDITed the account name to the name of the second account, and now the SMTP server no longer works for the first account. There seems to be no way to do anything else. No way to change the choice of Default Server to something non-default. No way to add a second entry to the SMTP server list. No way to delete an entry. If I leave the account name blank, hoping that it will work for all accounts, none of them work.
An Internet search suggests that there MAY be a bug in T-bird 115 - but the discussions are pretty murky and without conclusions. Before I dig myself in even deeper, I thought I would impose on you once again for suggestions. Thanks for anything you can offer.
Bill (wjeffrey)
A bit more - Before the Cox-to-Yahoo transition, the Account Settings in Thunderbird for all 5 of my Cox accounts pointed to something called the SMTP Default Server. This Default Server listed the Cox SMTP server name and port, but I don't think it included an account name. In other words, all my accounts could point to the same Default Server, as long as each account supplied its own password upon use.
Thunderbird stored the individual account passwords in an internal password table (Tools>Settings>Security>Passwords>Saved Passwords>Show Passwords). Each account (email address) had two entries in the table - one naming the Cox POP server, and one naming the Cox SMTP server. The SMTP entry in the table included the account name (email address) and the password for that account. My surmise was that when I send an email from a given account, Thunderbird grabs the server name and password from the table, and forwards them to the SMTP server along with the outgoing message. The server would then compare the account name and password with its own record, stored (and visible) at Cox.com.
Summary: I have now tried to add the first two of my 5 cox.net accounts to T-bird, using Account Passwords as you suggested. In both cases, the incoming (POP) half of Thunderbird works as it should. The outgoing (SMTP) half remains a problem. Unless I mis-remember or mis-understand something, the thing that is different today is that the definition of the Default SMTP Server now includes a specific account name. I need a way to specify the Default Server without an account name, or a way to set up multiple non-default SMTP servers. Neither appears to be possible. I don't know what to do next.
Bill (wjeffrey)
I solved the SMTP problem I was experiencing. Turns out that as I was going through the Cox-to-Yahoo transition, Mozilla updated my version of T-bird from 102 to 115. In desperation, I uninstalled V115, downloaded and installed V102, filled in all the same information, and it all worked perfectly. BEWARE. I got a warning message that the downgrade would destroy my profile, and it did. All my UNREAD emails from before and after came across, but all the previously-read emails did not. And my address book is missing. I probably could have backed it up, but I didn't know enough to do that. So be it - I will recreate what I can, and live with it. BTW, I had no extensions of any kind set up in T-bird.
Summary: Windows 11, five or six POP accounts, all of which had transferred sort of easily easily from Cox to Yahoo. Neither the Cox account passwords nor the Yahoo account passwords work in T-bird. As ChrisJ2 suggested above, I ended up getting an App Password for each account - WRITE IT DOWN - and T-bird was happy with it for both the POP and SMTP side of each account. I suspect there are other ways of handling that. In particular, I did not try the OAuth2 password confirmation. But this one worked.
Special thanks to ChrisJ2,, who helped me hang onto my sanity as I went through this.
Bill
So when you changed the imap/smtp server settings in Thunderbird to the Yahoo settings were you able to use auth TLS or did you use the less secure (so i am told) Otah2?
Remember,I was using POP, not IMAP. Prob makes no difference except for the port number. I used Pop.mail.yahoo.com, port 995, SLS/TLS, normal password. The Username must be the entire account name including "...@cox.net"
I got App Password by logging into a Yahoo account, then going to Account Info, Security, App Password, then Generate Password. Specify the App as Thunderbird, and the email account that needs an app password. When you get it, write it down! You can apparently get a new one, but it is a PITA.
