At&T abandoning bellsouth.net domain...sending affected customers the middle finger

Hit there, viccarro. We understand that you are having a problem with your bellsouth email domain. We can help you with that. 

Yes, AT&T has discontinued the bellsouth email domain. All that means is that no new email addresses can be created with that domain. That doesn't mean the bellsouth domain is not supported. It still is. 

When it comes to email clients such as Mac Mail not working with an email domain, the first thing that is needed to be checked is by going to the AT&T/Yahoo webmail. That is the direct email server, where Mac Mail downloads the email from. 

If you are able to get logged into that server, then we can skip the password reset, but if you are not, then a password reset is needed. 

A password reset is the first step in recovering any account. Please follow these steps: 

1. Go to reset your password.
2. Enter your user ID and the last name associated with your ID.
3. Choose your verification method and follow the prompts.
4. Enter and confirm your new password.

After resetting the password, the next step is to create a secure mail key. A secure mail key is a like a password, but it does not expire and cannot be reset. It can only be deleted and created. Please follow these steps: 

1. Go to your myAT&T Profile. Sign in, if asked.
2. Scroll to My linked accounts, select the email account that needs a secure mail key.
3. Scroll to Secure mail key, select Manage secure mail key.
4. Choose the email address that you’d like to use, if you have more than one.
5. Select Add secure mail key. Enter a nickname for the secure mail key to make it easy to recognize.
6. Choose Create secure mail key.
7. Select Copy secure mail key to clipboard. Make a note of your secure mail key  for further updates.
   • For security purposes, the secure mail key only displays until you select OK. 
   • If you lose or forget the secure mail key, you can always create new secure mail keys.
8. Select OK.
9. Go to your preferred email app, replace the existing password with your secure mail key. For an IMAP account, delete the existing password for both the IMAP and SMTP servers. Replace them with your secure mail key.

After creating the secure mail key,  the next step is to add that key to account in Mac Mail. There has been an update to settings. AT&T has switched from POP3 accounts to IMAP. Here is how you change your settings:

1. Select Preferences > Account Information.
2. Choose your mail account.
3. IMAP.
4. Confirm User name.
5. Enter your password or secure mail key.
6. Confirm or enter the following settings:
   • Incoming Mail Server -  imap.mail.att.net (IMAP) 
   • Outgoing Mail Server -  smtp.mail.att.net (IMAP) 
7. In Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP), choose Edit SMTP Server List.
8. Confirm:
   • Server Name - smtp.mail.att.net.
   • Use default ports - 993(for imap.att.net)  465 (fot smtp.mail.att.net)
   • Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is selected.
9. Select OK. 
10. On Advanced tab, confirm:
    • SSL checkbox is selected.
    • Authentication field is set for Password.
11. Close window

After all that, your Mac Mail should be back into working order. If not, please let us know by including the error messages that you are getting or steps that you are unable to follow and we can help you along the way to success. 

Matthew, AT&T Community Specialist

Still going me a message that says it doesn't have the information needed to reset my account. Now what?

We know how important it is to have access to your email account, and we'd be happy to help you @viccarro.

In order to further help with getting you into your email account, we'll need to meet in a Direct Message. We'll need to gather some further information from you, so we're able to take a closer look into why this is happening. Please check your Direct Message inbox (it's the chat icon next to the bell icon in the upper right corner of the Forums).

We look forward to hearing from you. 

Robert, AT&T Community Specialist

Still no response from you people. How can you continue to simply abandon customers - yet you have allowed me to pay you for the service - on this domain - for 20 years? No problem taking my money - yet you pretend not to be able to resolve this issue. This is an issue of resource allocation and negligence on your part, nothing more. You cripple people'e emails for your convenience, then make the maze of 'customer service' access so difficult that most will give up rather than continue to pursue. You should be ashamed. Guess we'll have to invoke the media next to bring some attention to this...

I feel your pain as I am in the very same boat. I cannot access my bellsouth net email. We encountering the same messages. I have been on the phone several hours with 4 different ATT employees.