How to set up Yahoo Mail account on my MacBook's Mail Application?

Question

I have a basic Yahoo mail account.
Apple has a mail application, and I tried to set up my Yahoo mail account on it, but I don't know what some of the terms are...
Is my account POP or IMAP or Exchange?
What's my incoming mail server (example: mail.example.com) ?
Outgoing?
What else do I need to know...?

Thanks!

I tried downloading Ypops, but it didn't work for the Mac mail application...

Answer 1

Hi there...unfortunately, the basic Yahoo account does not allow POP/IMAP forwarding unless you upgrade to their Plus or Premium accounts do.

HOWEVER, you can install a freeware application called Ypops: http://ypopsemail.com/ which will give you the ability to legally forward the basic Yahoo Mail account. The instructions to setup up your mail account are on the download website I've given.

[edit] aside from the Ypops application there isn't any other way to use Yahoo Mail unless you upgrade to their Yahoo Plus or Premium account service.

Here is the Ypops Configuration Read Me file:

Where to place these files

use terminal to place ypops and ypops.bin to /usr/local/bin
(since Finder cannot access to that directory.)
* launch Terminal.app in the /Applications/Utilities
* cd [path to this un-zipped folder]
(you can drag the folder's icon into the terminal window to get the path)
(so it looks like cd /Users/JohnDoe/Documents/download/yahoopops_mac)
* sudo chmod u+x ypops
* sudo chmod u+x ypops.bin
* sudo cp ypops /usr/local/bin/
* sudo cp ypops.bin /usr/local/bin/

use terminal or Finder to place ypopsrc to your home directory
* cp ypopsrc ~/

Use TextEdit (or SubEthaEdit, recommended) to edit the content of ypopsrc in your home directory to match your configuration (in particular, if you have proxy server to handle external connection...). Otherwise, the setting in the ypopsrc should be OK for most users:
* it will flag those fetched mails as 'read' in yahoo;
* it will empty the trash folder each time it visit yahoo;
* it will fetch 10 mails in each visit. (it seems that yahoo will lock the mail account temporarily if it sees the large amount of mail download activity in a short interval of time. So, don't set this number too large. Also, large number for this setting may make yahoopops delay the response back to Mail.app, which will think the localhost mail server (yahoopops) is defunct.)

If you need to change some settings in ypopsrc when ypops is running, you need to re-launch ypops to make those change effective. So, the following command is to terminate ypops:
* type 'ps' in terminal (without quote)
* see and write down PID of ypops.bin (process ID)
* type 'kill nnn' in terminal (without quote; nnn is the PID you just wrote down)

How to use it
For the first time, manually launch it by typing the following into your terminal window:
/usr/local/bin/ypops

In your mail client (e.g., Apple's Mail.app), do the following setup:
* add a new account from menu: Mail: Preferences, account
* Account Type: POP
* Description: my YahooPOPs (or your favorite)
* E-mail address: [e-mail]
* Full Name: Your Name
* Incoming Mail server: localhost
* User Name: your_login_name_in_yahoo
* Password: your_password_in_yahoo
* Outgoing Mail server: (use your present ISP's setting)
(I don't think this compiled program can send mail via yahoo, and I don't know how to configure Mac OS X's mail server function for this.)
* In advanced setting: do not check SSL, but the port number need to be set to 5058, as configured in ypopsrc.
* also, due to yahoo's recent change in user interface, the present version (0.6) of yahoopops cannot delete any mail. So, instruct Mail.app not to delete read mails (that is, leave the mails on the server forever). This apparently requires us to constantly visit yahoo web site to manually clean the mail box. Yet, it will avoid duplicate download of mails by yahoopops program. (you see, if Mail.app is set to delete the mails after fetching them, yahoopops relays the deletion instruction and thinks those mails are deleted. So, next time when checking mails, yahoopops will encounter them and result in duplicate mails in your Mail.app mail box.)

If you successfully fetch mails, you may want to have ypops running automatically. (that is, to avoid typing /usr/local/bin/ypops in terminal every time you turn on your computer)
add the command (either after the last line, or after the first line) in this file:
/etc/csh.login
This file is analogy of Startup item folder for unix stuff.

Known problem(s)
* it will dump the following message to terminal window:
Socket closed.Error = Operation now in progress Retval = 0
whenever it finish fetching/checking mails. It seems no harm, because it does not crash and continues to work.
* It does not have the necessary fix to work with the recent change of yahoo mail interface. As a result, it is not able to delete mails in yahoo mail. The work around: don't let your Mail.app (or other mail client) delete fetched mail on server. Set to leave mails on the server forever. It is you who have to visit yahoo mail web site to manually delete mails.



How is it compiled
This binary is compiled using Apple's gcc 3.3, in Mac OS X 10.3.5 environment, with additional packages downloaded by fink. The additional packages are openssl, curl, and libxml (see the beginning comment segment in ypcompile with a text editor.) Although Mac OS X unix core has those, yahoopops requires newer version than Mac OS X can provide. The compilation is achieved by modified ypcompile shell script (included in this zip), to work-around the different file tree structure than yahoopops developer group expects. I don't know if the compiled binary file requires any run-time library. If so, it may not run on your computer at all. After all, I am not a unix guru.

The shell script file ypops was generated automatically during the compilation process. However, I modify its content to make ypops.bin run in the background.

What if the program won't run
It runs fine on my Mac, so I don't know what to do with your problem(s). Please post your question / problem at ypops / Mac forum and see if others can help.

Q3Q2003 at yahoo dot com
Oct 20, 2004

Answer 2

If it's just basic, there's no way to tell Apple Mail or any mail client (like Outlook) to access Yahoo Mail. Yahoo! used to offer this ability (POP) for free, but they took it out so basic users would have to see the ads on the Yahoo Mail website.

So you can upgrade to Yahoo Mail Plus or whatever the next level is, which will let you use either a POP or IMAP server (probably IMAP). Or you can use an application called YPOPs, which lets you run your own POP server for your own Yahoo account only, but I'm not sure that's quite allowed by the terms of service.

Answer 3

If you can't get Ypops to work you can try MrPostman and you can access the regular Yahoo mail with Apple mail using this freeware. You can find the link in here and one person's directions to set it up with YM.
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=54722&highlight=apple+mail+yahoo

Answer 4

just try the standard thing in having a yahoo mail application.

Answer 5

you need the paid yahoo email account then this
http://www.google.com/search?q=yahoo+mail+with+mac

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