Forum Discussion

Waleee's avatar
Waleee
New Contributor II
2 months ago

Successful Email transition to Yahoo: using Thunderbird on Windows

After spending a good deal of time and effort trying to make Thunderbird get along with Yahoo, I finally figured it out. If you are reading this, you have probably already called Cox only to find out that they have washed their hands of the whole email thing and will only refer you to a phone number for Yahoo. And of course Yahoo is not set up to handle this, so you will wait in the phone queue for half of forever only to find out that they don't know how to set it up either. So in the hope that my experience may help some other poor slob, I present the below instructions, and I hope it helps. I am using the Thunderbird program to access emails on a Windows computer, however I suspect the settings will be the same for anyone using Thunderbird.

First, to transfer the emails to Yahoo and establish a webmail account, follow the directions provided by Cox as regurgitated here:

"Visit mail.yahoo.com/login and enter your complete cox.net email address, including the Cox.net suffix, as your username. Then enter your current Cox password, and accept the Yahoo Mail Terms of Service. Upon signing in, you’ll set up a new password for your new Yahoo account."

Now log out of the Yahoo webmail and open Thunderbird. I have my email accounts and corresponding folders located in a column on the left of the page. Yours may be set up differently, but mine is the default and I will base detailed instructions on that. Go to the left column and click on the line that shows your complete cox email address. If you have multiple addresses, you will need to perform the following instructions for each of them. Now look to the top right of the new page and click on "account settings". At the bottom of the settings page is the line "Outgoing Server (SMTP)", and at the far right of that line is a box that says "Edit SMTP server"; click on it. A pop-up window will open, adjust the settings as shown below:

Description: COX
Server Name: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Port: 465
Connection Security: SSL/TLS
Authentication method: OAuth2
User Name: your user name, duh
click OK

Now go back to the left hand column and click on "Server Settings". On this page the settings will be as follows:

Server Name: imap.mail.yahoo.com 
Port: 993
Connection Security: SSL/TLS
Authentication Method: OAuth2

Now close Thunderbird and reopen it. You will now be asked for a password for each of your email addresses. Use the new password that you used to set up the Yahoo webmail. Congratulations you have mail! If you want to use POP instead of IMAP I suggest you first set it up with IMAP and then go back and change the setting after you know it is working.

 

 

COX YAHOO email Thunderbird

36 Replies

Sort By
Show More
  • jusdoit's avatar
    jusdoit
    New Contributor
    17 days ago

    Thank you for the excellent instructions. I have 4 Cox emails and have started with setting up 2 in TB.  I am receiving the same email copies to both email addresses which is very annoying. Any suggestions. Before the transition each email only received emails for each specific account.

    Seems like Cox could have offered to sell us our domain so we dont have to deal with Yahoo. I hate seeing all the ads and yahoo emails selling stuff. Do you know if I have to pay  $5 for each email to be ad free? Yahoo has a email selling something in the top of all emails. Its nice these do not show up in TB which is one way to be ad free.

    Do you have any experience with another email programs that have the excellent format like TB for multiple emails?

    Thank you

    • DPS's avatar
      DPS
      New Contributor II
      14 days ago

      jusdoit,

      The instructions started with Waleee, we just added to them as we figured stuff out.

      Don't know if each email is charged $5 to be "Ad Free", I would assume so since they are all treated as separate logins.

      I have used  MS Outlook in the past for multiple email accounts and it worked fine.

      /R

      DPS

  • swoop's avatar
    swoop
    New Contributor II
    17 days ago

    for mac mail app on imac, I had to only edit the incoming and outgoing mail servers information for the "cox account" in the "accounts" section of the imac system preferences. If I tried to add a new account either Yahoo! or Mail or any, it didn't work. Also, with this method I got to keep my message organization and it's pretty seamless. IE. no Adding accounts, etc.

    1 So I had to login to yahoo webmail with cox email address, accept terms and make a new password for accessing webmail at mail.yahoo.com. Then goto settings while signed in to yahoo webmail and "generate app password" and name it cox mail or something and click generate. then copy the generated password for mac mail cox.

    2 Then I had to open Mail app on imac. From the "Mail" dropdown menu at the top" i chose "settings". 

    3 I made sure the cox.net email account was selected on the left side of settings. Typed the generated password on the Account information screen (and changed the username to include Cox.net) Then chose "server settings" on right side tab menu. Then updated the incoming and outgoing servers from the imap.cox.net or whatever it was to imap.mail.yahoo.com and unchecked automatic for ports and double checked the ssl and port # settings (shown in picture)

    Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server

    • Server - imap.mail.yahoo.com
    • Port - 993
    • Requires SSL - Yes

    Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server

    • Server - smtp.mail.yahoo.com
    • Port - 465 or 587
    • Requires SSL - Yes
    • Requires authentication - Yes

    Your login info

    • Email address - Your full email address (name@cox.net)
    • username - name@cox.net
    • Password - USE Generated App Password from yahoo webmail settings here!
    • Requires authentication - Yes

    The password for both incoming and outgoing will not be the webmail password setup at mail.yahoo.com when you first accepted the terms of service. That password is for logging into yahoo WEBMAIL.  You have to create a special password while you are logged into yahoo webmail, and choose "settings" then look for "generate app password" name it cox email password or something and copy the generated password from yahoo  webmail settings. Then paste or type the generated password into the password field under "account information" tab shown in the picture below of imac mac mail "mail dropdown menu">"settings" for imap and for smtp 

    The username must include Cox.net. Automatically manage unchecked.

     

     

  • trentheidtke's avatar
    trentheidtke
    New Contributor
    15 days ago

    You would have thought that Cox would not have left virtually everyone in the lurch who uses Thunderbird or Outlook.  That someone outside of Cox had to figure it out and post a solution say volumes about the complete and utter lack of customer service on the part of Cox.  This has been nothing short of a disaster in terms of the migration and is inexcusable.  That said, THANK YOU for posting the solution.  The OAuth2 setting was a new to me item and it seems to have worked.    

  • yrogerg's avatar
    yrogerg
    New Contributor
    15 days ago

    It's a traaaaaap!

    I got the connection to T'bird working, thanks Waleee! However that is when the games began. Not all of my old emails migrated over. All of 2023 was missing, and much of 2024. I assumed that my bad habits of keeping old mail around had swamped the little server that the yahoos seem to be using, so I started sorting and deleting old mails. Part way through the process I realized that they were regenerating! Move them to the trash, empty the trash, and they just download again. ok, so I started bulk archiving to local folders rubbish files and all. Same thing, the emails would just reload, sometimes, but not always. Also if I tried to move more than 100 files at a time the whole mess would freeze up and fall over. Sometimes if I moved a month at a time, the files would copy out, then reload into the inbox, then slowly delete frome the inbox one   at   a   time, at a 1 to 2 second interval. Cripes what a circus. I had to go the the yahoos online browser and delete a bunch of mail there to keep it from reloading.

    So, I decided to archive one of my other accounts before I switched over to the yahoos. Cox has cut the cord, and no access to the vacuum tube server yet, so I should be able to clean things up, delete the account, and create a new account. What could go wrong? Same thing happened! I dip out 6 months of mail, and it flows right back in. What...where...fkt...I am giving up and going to bed. Tomorrow I will patent this mess as a perpetual motion machine.

  • ChrisSparks's avatar
    ChrisSparks
    New Contributor
    9 days ago

    Finally realized that I needed the yahoo email to start this process.  It only sent me 1 even though I have two cox emails!  So I tried OATH2 and it doesn't work.  I get popups complaining.  Also I don't even think the smtp server is pingable.

    \--------------

    had wrong server name it is working now with OATH2

     

  • wjeffrey's avatar
    wjeffrey
    New Contributor
    19 hours ago

              This is a great thread. Thanks to all.  My question is similar.

              Windows 11 - As a Cox.net email user, I had a Cox master email account and five subaccounts. They have all transitioned to Yahoo. I also have a Gmail account. I can send and receive between each of my Yahoo accounts and the Gmail account, so it seems the setups on Yahoo are good.

                My next step is to set up the six Yahoo accounts on Thunderbird 115.11.0. The problem I am having is that Thunderbird wants me to supply the password for the Yahoo pop and smtp servers. I know what the passwords were for the Cox servers, but I don't know them for the Yahoo servers. The Yahoo account password does not work, nor does the first part of my email address. Since the accounts work properly on Yahoo, the server passwords must exist somewhere in the Yahoo account information, but I can't find them. Any thoughts on where they can be found would be welcome.

                I would prefer to keep the accounts as POP (port 995) rather than IMAP (port 993) unless there is some reason to change. Is the use of the mysterious OAuth parameter the secret?

    Bill