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Teacher

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10 Messages

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011 11:10 PM

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No external email client can access my att.net email

I can successfully send / receive WEBMAIL using my att.net email identity.  I have spent one full day (and substantial phone time with AT&T techs - pleasant, but NO helpful advice other than to sign up for their pay-for tech advice service) trying to configure an external PC based email client to access my ATT.NET account.  I have carefully downloaded and super-carefully followed ATT.NET advice for 1) Thunderbird 5, 2) Eudora 7.1, and 3) Microsoft Live Mail on my Vista 32 PC.  Absolutely nothing works.  Having searched many blogs, I see that Yahoo.com email can NOT be accessed by an outside client - it is a web based service only.  I suspect that because AT&T now uses Yahoo.com for email, AT&T also can not be access by any standard email client.   This is a huge problem for me - I view cloud based (web based) internet email as inferior to my downloading email to my PC, backing it up, organizing it, and managing it at the PC level.   FURTHER: I was told now that I have an AT&T 'GATEWAY' device (AT&T's combination modem / wireless router) that device must remain on my home's carefully ethernet cabled system to run the TV --- and can not be removed or my AT&T UVerse TV system will stop.  Thus, if I return to my earlier ISP (Comcast), the Comcast-provided cables that AT&T took over apparently can NOT be used by Comcast ... I will have to have my house double-wired for AT&T TV and Comcast-Internet.   My questions: 

a) HOW CAN I ACCESS ATT.NET EMAIL USING ONE OF THE ABOVE EMAIL CLIENTS?

b) IF I MUST RETURN TO COMCAST FOR EMAIL, MUST I ALSO DUMP U-VERSE TV TO USE EXISTING COAX CABLES to return to  Comcast Internet+ email?

Thank you, in advance ...

 

ps: among the MANY AT&T and related pages I looked at are

http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB401568
http://www.att.com/esupport/main.jsp?ct=9000722

http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB401738

http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB401570

and more....  The suggested answers ... don't work.

Accepted Solution

Official Solution

Teacher

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10 Messages

13 years ago

Yup - When I ignored my ATT.NET account and worked with my 2 GMail Accounts, both of which POP/IMAP over to email clients on my PC and iPhone, my life got better. Thanks!

Expert

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10.1K Messages

13 years ago

If you are switching e-mail providers go to gmail. No need to tie your e-mail to your internet provider.

If you go back to comcast for internet/e-mail it should not impact the coax now used for u-verse. That coax was for comcast TV.

Comcast does not distribute data service via coax (u-verse does). Comcast data comes into the house on their coax & goes to a modem (via a splitter if TV is included). After the modem it is cat5.

Professor

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1.9K Messages

13 years ago

I've been using Thunderbird for years, both with Comcast and now Uverse (att.net) without problems. Here's a thread that might help some. http://forums.att.com/t5/Features-and-How-To/Mozilla-Thunderbird/m-p/2668993/highlight/true#M23011

Teacher

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10 Messages

13 years ago

Thanks, and actually before I wrote my question, I did locate, read,
and tried to follow the advice offered at:
http://forums.att.com/t5/Features-and-How-To/Mozilla-Thunderbird/m-p/2668993/highlight/true#M23011

and also:

http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB401568
http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB401570

and

http://www.ehow.com/how_6822136_set-mail-plus-forward-pages.html 

which led me to EITHER ATT.NET or YAHOO.COM pages for mail OPTIONS that

clearly said 'If you want to check email from this att.net Mail account in an email client like Outlook, visit "Pop & Forwarding" on the left.' - and several tutorials SHOWED the 'Pop & Forwarding' choice on the left side of the screen.

 

THE 'POP + FORWARDING' OPTION IS NO LONGER VISIBILE AT ATT.NET / YAHOO.COM MAIL OPTIONS.

THE WEBMAIL AT ATT.NET DOES NOT GIVE ME THE SERVER - CHOICE TO PERMIT POP ACCESS. 

 

I tried EVERY recommended and possible variant trying to set up a simple Windows Live Mail account.

Primarily:

Incoming (POP)                     pop.att.yahoo.com
Outgoing (SMTP)                 smtp.att.yahoo.com (requires authentication)
User name:                         (my email address)@att.net
Logon using    authenticated POP (APOP)
Logon using account name        (my email address)@att.net
Logon using Secure Password Authentication
Incoming mail server:             POP3
Incoming/Outgoing User Name:     Full AT&T email address, including domain (e.g., test@att.net, test@bellsouth.net)
Incoming mail port #:             995, secure connection (SSL) checked
Outgoing mail port #             465, secure connection (SSL) checked

 

Then, when I got back error messages such as:

Unable to send or receive messages for the Att (______ ) account.
Windows Live Mail couldn't log on to the email server using authenticated POP (APOP).
Contact your email provider and verify that it supports authenticated POP. ...

 

So I tried all available authentication and NON authentication options. 

I still could not send or receive any email. 

 

I do believe for new users, like myself, the POP access to ATT.NET to allow me to use

any email client has been crippled by AT&T or YAHOO at the server level. 

 

Any other new users running into this dead end wall?

Anyone working at AT&T willing to step up and help?

thanks -

 

 

 

Expert

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10.1K Messages

13 years ago

I wanted to set up my wife's free yahoo mail for access by mac mail & it says it is not included in the free account. For only 19.95 a year I can get it.

I think I was able to set it up for the u-verse account, which I never use because it is so ugly.

Free gmail resolves all.

Teacher

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10 Messages

13 years ago

Thanks, Aviewer - I think you are right. It was EASY to configure my existing Gmail accounts with POP access to email clients Eudora and Thunderbird - and my iPhone too. I do think AT&T and YAHOO have gotten together, and with the 'NEW Yahoo' email deal, have dumped POP service to standard email clients - in favor of competing with chat / twitter / skype / facebook / music / YouTube type videos / VOIP voice - video telephony. Too bad. No everyone is a pimply faced teenager who wants communication NOW and forgets what was said an hour a go. Sometimes, what was sent in an email months ago - sometimes years ago - is critical to adult real world decisions and interactions. Thanks to all who helped me get this far ~

Contributor

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3 Messages

13 years ago

Your experience and conclusions mirror mine. I tried to go back to my blackberry bold 9700 from an iphone 3gs. Spent hours trying to figure out why att.yahoo mail would NOT work, no matter what I, or AT&T support did to "fix" it.  My regular windows live hotmail account worked just fine, but not my AT&T email - no way/no how.  I concur that Yahoo does not support that mail format, perhaps an attempt to leverage everyone into "the cloud".  AT&T tech support said that Yahoo mail was a known issue and they were "working on it" - but message threads go back at least 3 months on these issues so I would begin to wonder whether that want to fix it.

I ended up back with 3GS, a nice  multimedia device with cool software but lousy phone call quality. The opposite of Blackberry, with excellent hardware but lousy software and OS - including 6.0XXX. Good luck with your quest.   

Contributor

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3 Messages

13 years ago

Come to think on it - if at&t/yahoo email works on iphone, then perhaps it is a specific problem wth blackberry ? Could not be being blocked at server level if iphone works?

Teacher

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10 Messages

13 years ago

Hi Jay64 - My iPhone successfully pulls in email from my YAHOO & COMCAST & GMAIL accounts - and because my AT&T iPhone has TERRIBLE cell signal where I live (and many other places nearby) I also signed up for the free GMAIL VOICE service that allows people to leave voicemail on my (nonfunctional most of the time when I'm home) iPhone, which I then get as a VOICE + TEXT EMAIL to my desktop or laptop or iphone connections over WiFi at home. This is slick. Too bad AT&T POP email service - feeding data from webmail to standard email programs - is, as best I can figure, history. I appreciate the suggestion(s) to work around AT&T primarily through GMail. Good luck picking berries in the blackberry patch.

Teacher

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10 Messages

13 years ago

One other thought - as JFW mentions (See above - many helpful posts) JFW has successfully gotten ATT.NET Pop service for years. I, too, have had Yahoo many years, with POP service to my iPhone for years. Long time users won't see any changes. MAYBE they recently shut down the permissions for POP / FORWARDING options on both YAHOO and ATT.NET-YAHOO Emails for persons newly opening up accounts. New guys get left out holding a melting POPsicle - required to use Webmail in the Cloud with AT&T or YAHOO or nothing at all.
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