For the mom who gives us everything - Mother's Day gifts that connects us.
Protect yourself online
gooch_1's profile

Scholar

 • 

110 Messages

Thursday, March 16th, 2017 12:06 AM

Yahoo Dropping POP3 3/31/2017. Does thatalso apply to att.yahoo.com?

I read that Yahoo Mail is dropping POP3 and will be using IMAP only. Does that also apply to the email handled by Yahoo for ATT?

Expert

 • 

15K Messages

7 years ago

The reason I don't want to switch from POP3 to IMAP is that I have about
100 sub-folders under my INBOX in my POP3 account. I also have a about
100 message filters that examine the mail in the INBOX and move it to
the appropriate sub-folder. If I switch to IMAP, I have to establish a
new account in Thunderbird/Seamonkey, manually add 100 sub-folders to
that IMAP account and then add 100 message filters to the IMAP acccount.
I then have to MOVE ( or COPY) all of the email from the old POP3
account to the new IMAP account -- about 27,000 emails. How many
days/weeks will it take me to do that?

While I don't have as many filters and mailbox folders as you I do have "enough" to worry about this also.  But what I suggest below is my theory on how to possibility get around this.  It's theory in that if I have to switch from using a POP account in TB to creating a new IMAP account I have not tried this.  However I have done what I am about to suggest when creating a new POP account in an entirely new TB profile.

 

I am going to assume you already know that TB (and Firefox too) save their entire "world" in a profile and know how to find it (google search for something like "Thunderbird profile" if you don't know what it is - I use a Mac so I don't know where it is on other platforms).  The folder and file names I talk about are as I see them on my Mac.  But I really think those should be the same on other platforms too.

 

The TB profile contains all your mailboxes and filters.  Specifically there's a folder (directory) called Mail and in there is a folder for each pop server.  In my case I only have a folder named inbound.att.net.   Inside of inbound.att.net are all the files that make up your individual mailboxes.  You should see a pair of files for each mail box; the mail box name and the same name with a .msf filename extension (although some may not have a .msf file).  I've moved them into a new profile to transfer all my mailboxes (I think you don't actually need the .msf files but it probably doesn't hurt to move them too).

 

There's other files in the mailbox directory as well.  It's probably safe to move them as well.

 

As for the filters, TB saves them in a file named training.dat in the profile.  The address book is in files that start with abook and have a .mab extension.  There's other goodies in the profile as well that can be moved for addons.

 

It's easy to experiment with this stuff because, as I said TB's entire "world" is saved in its profile.  So you can save (backup) the profile (for example as a zip file or make a copy some place else) and then play to your hearts content.  And if you something goes wrong replace the actual profile with its backup.  Indeed I regularly make a backup of my TB profile just to be safe particularly when fiddling with new or updated addons (I do that for FF too).

 

As I said I created a new profile this way (It's been a while but I think something got corrupted in my old profile that I couldn't track down).  So you can move mailboxes and filters across profiles.  Thus this is not theory.  But what is theory at this point is that I don't know if the profile organization for the mailboxes (or even filters for that matter) is the same for an IMAP account.  If I have to create an IMAP account I'll look at the profile to see if it organizes the mailboxes (and filters) the same way.  If so then hopefully all that stuff can be moved from the old POP profile data.  If not we're screwed.

----

Update/Edit:  Probably this kind of discussion doesn't belong here and more appropriately should be in one of the TB forums, e.g., its support forum.  There's certainly lots of experts there to help.  And there looks like lots of good stuff to review from this google search.  If we are forced to IMAP I certainly will be looking at that stuff.

 

 

 

 

Scholar

 • 

110 Messages

7 years ago

Agree about taking this to Mozilla forums. I was hoping someone from AT&T would
tell us wither or not POP3 is being dropped completely on 3/31. So far no word.

Scholar

 • 

110 Messages

7 years ago

AT&T continues to show the settings for both POP3 and IMAP here:

https://www.att.com/support/article/email-support/KM1010523/

 

I can't believe AT&T would shut down POP3 completely with out some kind of notice at the site mentioned above.

(edited)

Expert

 • 

15K Messages

7 years ago

I wouldn't expect that page to change until we're closer to or past March 31.  As I posted elsewhere it looks like we just have to wait it out and see what breaks.

Scholar

 • 

110 Messages

7 years ago

I received an email from AT&T stating that POP3 will be continued after 3/31/17 so I can continue downloading email.  There are other changes coming 6/30/17 but they won't affect email. That will continue just as it is now.

Expert

 • 

15K Messages

7 years ago

Thanks for the update.  Was the email specifically to you or some kind of general announcement?  If the latter I haven't as yet seen it at the time I'm posting this.

Tutor

 • 

5 Messages

7 years ago

This is insane!
Never heard anything from at&t about this.
How about iPhones? When I set up my email account , I had to use yahoo to set up my at&t email account. What's going to happen to that?

Also, I'm moving to an area that doesn't have at&t internet speeds of 45 Mbps , very disappointed , now I have to switch providers, 2nd time in a little over a year and now I have to change emails which is super frustrating unless I can still use my at&t emails without at&t internet, can anyone please give me some advice, thanks.

Scholar

 • 

110 Messages

7 years ago

They are not dropping POP3. You should be okay

Tutor

 • 

5 Messages

7 years ago

Ok
Now if I had to drop internet service with at&t , can I still get email? And view it?
I'm moving and they unfortunately don't have service with 45 Mbps. It's not like it's in the boondocks either. When I called at&t, one guy said yes and another guy said no.

Scholar

 • 

110 Messages

7 years ago

I don't see why not. I started with AT&T DSL many, many years ago. AT&T stopped
service in my area (NJ) so I switched to Verizon DSL. However, I still kept my
email connection with AT&T. After AT&T turned over their email service to Yahoo,
I still kept my AT&T email address through att.yahoo.com. In summary, I haven't
had AT&T service for almost 20 years but I still maintain and use my email at
att.net
Not finding what you're looking for?
New to AT&T Community?
New to the AT&T Community? Start by visiting the Community How-To.
New to the AT&T Community?
Visit the Community How-To.