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simondp

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 24, 2010
7
0
Hello all, this is my first post so be gentle! I've also tried searching for the answer but to no avail. I tried posting on Apple support forum but no luck either.

I have an iPhone 3G, latest MacbookPro and latest iMac with latest versions of software. Also have MobileMe.

I use, and wish to continue to use, my Yahoo!Mail email address as my primary sending/receiving address but access this on any client - which I can currently do. (I've had this address for over a decade).

However, the mail client in Snow Leopard will still retrieve what's in the inbox from my Yahoo account even though I have already read it on the other machine/direct in Yahoo/on iPhone. I want it to be there (unless deleted), but just shown as read, spam moved to junk and, ideally, the sent-box in sync too. In other words, I want each of the front-ends to be just that - a front end - and in-sync.

Can this be done? At the moment when I go to my other mac, it downloads all the emails (fair enough) and I have to mark those that I've dealt with already as 'read' and 're-junk' the spam that I get. Somewhat frustrating. The iPhone front-end seems to do the best job. If I read an email on Yahoo then it magically shows as read on the iPhone. I currently use the original yahoo/iphone sync facility rather than mobile me to do that syncing.

Can anyone help please - even if it's to tell me it can't be done and I need to (reluctantly) change email address? I'm a new convert to the apple world...
Regards,
Simon
 

317342

Cancelled
May 21, 2009
785
569
Hello all, this is my first post so be gentle! I've also tried searching for the answer but to no avail. I tried posting on Apple support forum but no luck either.

I have an iPhone 3G, latest MacbookPro and latest iMac with latest versions of software. Also have MobileMe.

I use, and wish to continue to use, my Yahoo!Mail email address as my primary sending/receiving address but access this on any client - which I can currently do. (I've had this address for over a decade).

However, the mail client in Snow Leopard will still retrieve what's in the inbox from my Yahoo account even though I have already read it on the other machine/direct in Yahoo/on iPhone. I want it to be there (unless deleted), but just shown as read, spam moved to junk and, ideally, the sent-box in sync too. In other words, I want each of the front-ends to be just that - a front end - and in-sync.

Can this be done? At the moment when I go to my other mac, it downloads all the emails (fair enough) and I have to mark those that I've dealt with already as 'read' and 're-junk' the spam that I get. Somewhat frustrating. The iPhone front-end seems to do the best job. If I read an email on Yahoo then it magically shows as read on the iPhone. I currently use the original yahoo/iphone sync facility rather than mobile me to do that syncing.

Can anyone help please - even if it's to tell me it can't be done and I need to (reluctantly) change email address? I'm a new convert to the apple world...
Regards,
Simon

Yahoo does not support IMAP for desktop mail access, they use POP3. POP3 is a one-way mail delivery system... I won't bore you with the details but the boiled down way to look at it is....

Server >>>> You

Mail only travels one way....down.

IMAP, however, works like this...

Server <<>> You

...in other words, all changes, messages, folders, etc, are all syncronized on your Mail client (ie. Mail.app, Entourage, etc.) and the server.


Yahoo Mail for iPhone does actually use IMAP, it's the only system of Yahoo Mail to do so. Therefore, everything you view in the Mail app on your iPhone is exactly what is on the server.

Yahoo Mail Plus (using POP3), you will need to tell Mail.app (on your Mac desktop) to leave the messages on the server. This is done in the Preferences (see pic). You can download all of your Inbox mail through Mail.app and it will leave a copy on the server for you to sort or delete later through the Yahoo webmail interface.

Hope that helps! :)
 

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simondp

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 24, 2010
7
0
Thanks Juan. Yes, that does help explain it. It's very frustrating. Seems like the iphone mail integration is better than the desktop mail programme, though from what you say it's Yahoo's fault.

Thanks for your help and explanation.

Simon
 

317342

Cancelled
May 21, 2009
785
569
No worries, glad I could help. :)

The problem is that Yahoo doesn't (yet) provide IMAP support for desktop clients (only POP3), and does so only for mobile devices. If Yahoo provided full IMAP for Yahoo Mail, even if it was a paid add-on like POP3 access, it would be a real benefit to some users but I doubt many people (75% or more) would use it.

My guess is it has more to do with the sheer size of some of the mailboxes people have and the sheer strain it would put on their mail server. I have somewhere around 5,500+ e-mails (most with attachments) in my Yahoo box that would surely overload Mail.app were I to set it up. For now, POP access for an occasional e-mail send through Mail.app is fine since I don't necessarily need access to ALL of my e-mail on my desktop client (nor do I want it taking up that much space, either).

For example.... my campus Gmail account has just over 1GB of e-mail in there. I have it set up with IMAP but that means it takes up 1GB on my desktop, which 99.9% of it I don't necessarily need to access offline or at all times. I can easily log into the Gmail portal to pull it up if need be, and it doesn't take up space on my desktop. One of the problems I ran into with this setup was after I implemented Gmail IMAP on both my Macs, I got a "bandwidth exceeded" error from Google and had to wait for a few hours until I could access it again. No customer service, either... just "sorry, wait and try later." Personally, I use webmail more often anyway but if you check Google's support forums...they're rife with complaints about this "bandwidth exceeded" error.

I think Yahoo has it right with their implementation and that's why it has been #1 for so long. They were the first to do Push for the iPhone (even before Apple) so that must have helped. But there is always room for improvement (ie. SSL support for external POP retrieval....).
 

simondp

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 24, 2010
7
0
Thanks again. Yep, I have a good few thousand emails in my yahoo account now and, being a total hoarder, i don't need 99% of them. I guess that would kind of clobber a desktop mail.

Thank you for helping me understand the issues better. I shall stop berating Yahoo and Apple, and perhaps consider my own failings instead!
 

Drummer13

macrumors newbie
May 18, 2011
1
0
Ok, so I may not have followed what just happened. I have a .mac and yahoo account and have them both synced on my macbook pro and iphone 3gs. All software is up to date.

Last week, everything was running smoothly. If i deleted an email from my iphone inbox (.mac or yahoo) then the email was deleted on my macbook as well...and vise versa. If i read an email on either device, it was marked as read on the other also. THEN, my phone crashed and had to be recovered and reset to the original factory setting. I re-synced both mail accounts and now only my .mac account works back and forth on both devices. My yahoo messages have to be deleted twice, or "read" twice, etc etc.

Is there a way to make it work like it did before??
 

morespce54

macrumors 65816
Apr 30, 2004
1,331
11
Around the World
...My yahoo messages have to be deleted twice, or "read" twice, etc etc.
...

What do you mean by "deleted twice" and "read twice" exactly?

Any way, I had a similar issue a while ago. All I did was delete the Yahoo account (from the iPhone mail account pref pane), then add it back, manually, and everything was back on track.
 

d3vi1

macrumors member
May 18, 2011
68
9
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Yahoo! also offers IMAP

In the past 6 months (at least) the Yahoo! IMAP servers have continuously worked with ANY email client, regardless if you have Yahoo! Plus or not.

IMAP Server: imap.mail.yahoo.com
SMTP Server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com

The thing is, Mail.app automatically tries to configure POP3 when you add a @yahoo.xx address. What I do in order to avoid that in Thunderbird or Mail.app is add an account for @yahuuuuuuu.com (an invalid domain) and manually specify servers and others and just correct the email address later in accounts. In Mail.app you can also hold the option key while hitting next after entering the email and password in the wizard.

Afterwards Yahoo! IMAP works perfectly in Mail.app, iPhone, Thunderbird and even Outlook. Just remember that the Drafts folder is named Draft, the Sent Messages folder is named Sent, the Deleted Messages folder is named Trash and the Junk folder is named Bulk, regardless of the locale you're using. Select each one of them in the lower folders list in Mail.app and go to "Mailbox->Use this Mailbox for->" to configure folder mappings in Mail.app that don't conflict with the Yahoo! webmail and the IOS Mail.app.

If you do use IMAP on Yahoo!, you might also consider getting a Yahoo! Plus subscription in order to send them your thanks for the great service that they are providing for 14 years. The add-free Yahoo! Mail Plus Beta is still the best webmail experience of all the providers.

Cheers,
R.
 

*tiny*

macrumors newbie
May 23, 2011
1
0
In the past 6 months (at least) the Yahoo! IMAP servers have continuously worked with ANY email client, regardless if you have Yahoo! Plus or not.

IMAP Server: imap.mail.yahoo.com
SMTP Server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com

The thing is, Mail.app automatically tries to configure POP3 when you add a @yahoo.xx address. What I do in order to avoid that in Thunderbird or Mail.app is add an account for @yahuuuuuuu.com (an invalid domain) and manually specify servers and others and just correct the email address later in accounts. In Mail.app you can also hold the option key while hitting next after entering the email and password in the wizard.

Afterwards Yahoo! IMAP works perfectly in Mail.app, iPhone, Thunderbird and even Outlook. Just remember that the Drafts folder is named Draft, the Sent Messages folder is named Sent, the Deleted Messages folder is named Trash and the Junk folder is named Bulk, regardless of the locale you're using. Select each one of them in the lower folders list in Mail.app and go to "Mailbox->Use this Mailbox for->" to configure folder mappings in Mail.app that don't conflict with the Yahoo! webmail and the IOS Mail.app.

If you do use IMAP on Yahoo!, you might also consider getting a Yahoo! Plus subscription in order to send them your thanks for the great service that they are providing for 14 years. The add-free Yahoo! Mail Plus Beta is still the best webmail experience of all the providers.

Cheers,
R.



R ... THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU!! Single greatest piece of information ever posted about yahoo mail for macbook and iphone users. Ever.

:-*
 

ehsankhf

macrumors newbie
Mar 20, 2012
1
0
R ... THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU!! Single greatest piece of information ever posted about yahoo mail for macbook and iphone users. Ever.

:-*

Thanks for the instructions. I was using the mac mail with my yahoo account perfectly for a while but since yesterday (Mar 19-2012) it doesn't get updated and I cannot send or receive any email through my mac mail under my yahoo account. Wondering if you are experiencing the same problem or not and do you have any suggestions for solving the problem!? Thanks in advance
 

davidra

macrumors 6502
Oct 12, 2011
413
4
In the past 6 months (at least) the Yahoo! IMAP servers have continuously worked with ANY email client, regardless if you have Yahoo! Plus or not.

IMAP Server: imap.mail.yahoo.com
SMTP Server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com

The thing is, Mail.app automatically tries to configure POP3 when you add a @yahoo.xx address. What I do in order to avoid that in Thunderbird or Mail.app is add an account for @yahuuuuuuu.com (an invalid domain) and manually specify servers and others and just correct the email address later in accounts. In Mail.app you can also hold the option key while hitting next after entering the email and password in the wizard.

Afterwards Yahoo! IMAP works perfectly in Mail.app, iPhone, Thunderbird and even Outlook. Just remember that the Drafts folder is named Draft, the Sent Messages folder is named Sent, the Deleted Messages folder is named Trash and the Junk folder is named Bulk, regardless of the locale you're using. Select each one of them in the lower folders list in Mail.app and go to "Mailbox->Use this Mailbox for->" to configure folder mappings in Mail.app that don't conflict with the Yahoo! webmail and the IOS Mail.app.

If you do use IMAP on Yahoo!, you might also consider getting a Yahoo! Plus subscription in order to send them your thanks for the great service that they are providing for 14 years. The add-free Yahoo! Mail Plus Beta is still the best webmail experience of all the providers.

Cheers,
R.

Wondering if this is still necessary. I have Yahoo Plus. My problem is synching with the web server. If I send an email from the web, it doesn't show up in the sent folder on the iMac, and if I send it from Mail it doesn't show up on the web sent folder. I'm assuming there is a setting.....
 
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