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Use an IMAP server for Yahoo and BT Internet email
I’ve decided that when I find fixes to problems, I will share them here on my blog. This post covers to use an IMAP server for Yahoo and BT Internet email. I had searched all over the Internet for the solution and no-one seemed to have the answer. Surprisingly, I found the answer myself on Yahoo’s site. Let me start with why I was looking for a solution.
I have 2 Yahoo email accounts and also 2 BT Internet email accounts (from my days as a BT customer). I wanted to set them up in Outlook using IMAP and not POP3. For those of you who don’t know what the difference is; IMAP follows the folder structure on your email server. POP3 downloads emails to your local machine (unless you ask for them to be saved on the server) and any sent emails are stored on your local machine. The main disadvantage to using POP3 is that if you have an email address set up on multiple devices, then you can’t easily keep track of your sent emails. For example, if I set up my Yahoo email on my PC in Outlook using POP3 and send an email, I will not be able to see the sent email on my iPhone, because the sent message is stored on my PC.
So here is the answer for setting up an IMAP server for Yahoo and BT Internet email:
The following refers to Outlook 2007.
- Go to Tools>Account Settings>New
- Choose the option for Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP or HTTP and click Next
- Fill in your details on the next page, and then tick the box marked Manually configure server settings or additional server types
- This will bring you to the screen below
Click More Settings and you will be brought to the pages below:
DON’T forget to specify the sent folder that you wish to use on the server
So to recap (in case you can’t see all the images), the settings are:
Incoming
Server = imap.mail.yahoo.com
Type = IMAP
Username = xxxx@yahoo.com (xxxx@btinternet.com also worked fine for me)
Password = as normal
Security = SSL
Port = 993
Outgoing
Server = smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Type = SMTP
Username = xxxx@yahoo.com (xxxx@btinternet.com also worked fine for me)
Password = as normal
Security = SSL
Port = 465
These settings have been used to successfully configure my accounts on my HTC Desire HD and Outlook 2007 on my desktop PC and netbook.
Happy configuring!
21 Responses to “Use an IMAP server for Yahoo and BT Internet email”
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Great information Dee! Worked a treat for my Outlook; I’d also been looking for a solution to this for a while. You are the tech Guru!
Also worked great in Outlook 2010; main difference from your (Outlook 2007) notes is at the start of the setup process – when prompted to ‘Choose Serrvice’ select the ‘Internet E-Mail’ option as opposed to the ‘Microsoft Exchange or compatible service’ option.
Many thanks for your most helpful info – it reduced hours of configuration effort to just a few minutes – now I can synch mail folders between desktop and laptop without having to copy PST files!
Natalie and Chris, I’m really pleased that it helped. Chris, thank you for the Outlook 2010 update. I will add this to the article as an update.
Dee.
Great info. Popped these details into my HTC Desire (on 3) and it’s working a treat.
Derek.
Excellent! Works on Windows Live Mail as well (slight differences)
Pleased it helped!
Great piece of advice. Didn’t know that BT had IMAP servers. Helps enormously with my Dell Laptop, Blackberry and Ipad2 combo!
You’re welcome Mick. I wrote the article as a result of my frustration of finding the correct IMAP settings for my BT Internet accounts. I’m pleased that the article is helping lots of people in the same boat!
Thank you so much for sharing this I have been trying to find the right settings to do this for ages!!
You are welcome. I’ve begun to realise that I’ve got quite a few solutions to problems and will blog about them soon.
you would not know how to deal with this re setting up an account on iPhone would you?
when I set up my btinternet account, it automatically defaults to POP3, and does not give me the option to configure to IMAP (?). Any advice? Thank you
Hi Robert.
When setting up use the Yahoo option. So on your iPhone go to:
Settings>Add Account>Select Yahoo.
At the next screen, fill in the details below
Name : Whatever you want displayed
Address: Your BT Internet email address
Password: Your BT Internet email password
Description: Whatever you want to use to identify the account.
It literally takes 30 seconds to configure. Let me know how you get on
[...] can also use Outlook to extract your email from BT Yahoo. The instructions are in a blog post, Use an IMAP server for Yahoo and BT Internet email. IMAP downloads mail to your desktop, so you have a copy that you can back up, while leaving it on [...]
Thanks for this. What I found very confusing was that I expected to have to make changes to the account on the iPhone as well as on Outlook. Turns out that when you set up a Yahoo account on the iPhone it’s automatically configured to use IMAP, so it’s typically only the settings on your desktop that need to change. Your posts give the correct instructions, but perhaps it’s worth stressing that you don’t need to do anything special on the iPhone, iPad etc.
This has helped me enormously. Thank you
Thank you so much for sharing this. It worked perfectly in Entourage 2008 too. But weirdly, just as I changed this, I realised IMAP is not for me at all – unless some issues can be fixed. It seems everytime I delete an email in Entourage, it also gets deleted on the web server (webmail) which is bad. I’d rather keep everything on the web server for but delete emails from Entourage in order to free memory on my computer (Entourage’s database).
I have always kept an archive with lots of old folders and emails on the web server and they all started popping into Entourage (over 18,000 emails!!). When I delete them in Entourage, they all disappear on the server.
So finally, I come to my question: do you know a way of avoiding the way it synchronises? Super grateful if someone has an answer as I’d like see all my SENT EMAILS on the web server.
Hi
I have managed to set up the Bt Yahoo IMAP in Outlook 2010 using your excellent instructions. There is one problem though. All the mail listed in the IMAP Inbox appears to be sent from my @btinternet.com address regardless of the original sender. The text of the emails in unaffected. I have kept a connection to my original Bt Yahoo POP 3 account during the switchover and wonder whether this could be affecting anything. Have any ideas?
Do you have to configure BTs Mail server to work with IMAP?
[...] can also use Outlook to extract your email from BT Yahoo. The instructions are in a blog post, Use an IMAP server for Yahoo and BT Internet email. IMAP downloads mail to your desktop, so you have a copy that you can back up, while leaving it on [...]
Do you or does anyone know if this is possible on Mac Mail?
Deevas, Many thanks for your technical help. I have been struggling with this forever and now have sorted out the whole problem. You are a life saver.
Phil