Setup Yahoo! email account in Outlook Express

Yahoo! email is probably the worlds’ most popular free email service – for details please refer Gmail usage statistics. However, in contrast to the free Gmail POP access on all accounts and the recently announced POP settings for Hotmail emails, the free Yahoo! email accounts are not POP enabled.

Yes, they are compatible with Outlook Express, but you need to upgrade to the Yahoo! Plus service to download email to your computer. In this article I shall tell you how to setup a Yahoo! email account in Outlook Express.

Yahoo! Mail plus service

First things first. How can you get the Yahoo! Plus service for your account? Fortunately, it takes just a few clicks and costs less than $20 per year; that’s <$2 for a month, a small price for great convenience, right?

Log in to your account and click on the “Options” link and choose “Mail options“. Go to “POP & Forwarding” and click on “Upgrade to Mail Plus” link. This will open a new browser window. Follow the instructions, pay the $20 and you are all set to configure Yahoo! email account in Outlook Express.

Create a new account for your Yahoo! email address in Outlook Express

Now that your Yahoo! email is POP enabled, you need to create a new account for this email address in Outlook Express. The steps are similar to setting up and configuring any new email account in the program.

Open the “Internet Accounts” window through “Tools” -> “Accounts“. Click on the “Add” button and select “Mail” – refer image below.

Now follow the steps below:

1. In the next window type a name. This can be your name if it’s a personal Yahoo! email account or enter your company name if you use it for your business. Click on the “Next” button
2. Enter your full Yahoo! account email address – do not forget the @yahoo.com (or @ymail.com, @rocketmail.com) part.
3. Select POP3 from the “My incoming mail server is a …” drop down menu and enter plus.pop.mail.yahoo.com in the incoming mail server field. Put plus.smtp.mail.yahoo.com in the Outgoing Mail (SMTP) server field. Click the “Next” button.
4. Now feed in your Yahoo! mail ID (this is just the username) in the Account name field and then the password. If you put a check mark before “Remember password” Outlook Express will automatically connect to the account and download emails; else, you have to enter your password each time. Obviously, if it’s a shared or a public computer I will strongly advise leaving this option unchecked. Also make sure that “Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA)” does not have a checkmark. Hit the “Next” button.
5. The congratulations window will appear – celebrate! Click on “Finish” to complete the process.

Enjoy your Yahoo! email account on Outlook Express.

Download Yahoo! email – the free way

Most of us have the free Yahoo! email service even though the Plus account costs less than a couple of dollars per month. So can the free users download Yahoo email to their computer without spending a penny? The solution is to use a nifty new client Zimbra desktop – Yahoo’s own email program.