Using Yahoo Mail to collect other mail

See also this page for instructions on using the Yahoo address Book

See also this page for instructions for using Yahoo to check for a virus

What are we talking about?

Why would I want to do this?

How do I do it?

You can use Yahoo to get your regular e-mail from your home provider. This gives you the advantage of getting your e-mail from any computer anywhere, anytime as long as it has a web connection. DOES NOT WORK FOR AOL OR CompuServe. Don't need it anyway, since you can get your mail on line directly from any computer.

I have 2 e-mail accounts that I check daily. When I went to Oregon recently, I left my computer at home and used my son's to get my e-mail daily from both accounts.

Setting it up

We have to assume you have a Yahoo e-mail account. If you do not, go get one first by going to www.yahoo.com, click on Check E-Mail and click on Sign Up. Follow the process until you have an account.

Once you have the account, go to Check Mail, enter your name and password to get the opening screen. It looks like this:

Fig 1

To check your mail from other accounts, click the blue link to Options at the top. You then get this screen:

Fig 2

To set up the account to retrieve other mail, click on Check Other (POP) Mail. You get this screen:

Fig 3

Then click on Add Mail Server to get this screen:

Fig 4

This is where it gets tricky. You must know the way your provider names it's server. Some are mail.provider.com or pop3.provider.net where you put in the provider's name. For example, Access Nevada users would enter mail.anv.net. Whereas, Cox cable users insert pop3.lvcm.com. To determine how your mail is configured, check out this Page.

Then you must enter your user name and password. Note that user names do not include the @provider.com. Just the first part of your e-mail name. Also remember that passwords are case sensitive. Lower case/upper case must be correct.

Do not change any other items. Click OK to finish. That should return you to this screen:

Fig 5

As you can see, I have both my accounts listed. To check each account, click on the Check Mail link on the right of each listing. If you got it right, the screen will blink and show the number of messages downloaded like this:

Fig 6

To view the message(s), click on the link for Inbox in the line Downloaded x messages ... or you can use the link for Check Mail in the left menu.

Now the next time you open Yahoo mail, there will be a link to Check Other Mail. Look at Fig 1 above and look at the center where it says "Go To Inbox or Check Other Mail". Then click Check Mail on the right as noted above.

The only thing that gets somewhat confusing is the number of places the term Check Mail is used.

One final thing is to make Yahoo your default mail program so when you click on a mail to link on the web, Yahoo comes up, not Outlook Express.