Setup Yahoo! Mail in Outlook 2003

This tutorial shows you how to setup Yahoo! Mail in Outlook, and how to send and receive emails using your Yahoo! account, but from Outlook: setting up Yahoo! Mail in Outlook still always leaves you the possibility to check your Yahoo! emails from a web browser, as you did in the past. But having these emails downloaded in Outlook, which is probably running all the time on your computer anyway, is just an added convenience.

Note that in order to setup Yahoo! Mail legally in Outlook, you need to subscribe to the Mail Plus service Yahoo! offers, which costs about US$20 per year. There are ways around this limitation, by using third party software, but since the availability of free web based email services depends on their profitability, this tutorial will not cover integrating Yahoo! Mail to Outlook without the Yahoo! Mail Plus service.

Setup your Yahoo! Mail account in Outlook

Unlike Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail offers an email service that uses standard email protocol, namely "POP3" - since POP3 is one of the most popular ways to check emails from an email client, this means that you should be able to setup Yahoo! Mail in any email program.

To add a new email account in Outlook 2003, go to Tools > E-mail Accounts. The E-mail Accounts dialog will open: from there, select "Add a new e-mail account" and click Next.

On the next screen, click Add.

The E-mail Accounts wizard now presents you with a listing of possible email account types: for Yahoo! Mail, select POP3 and click Next.

Yahoo! Mail Account Settings for Outlook

The Outlook Email Account wizard's next screen will collect all the account information needed to connect Outlook to Yahoo! Mail:

Under Your Name, type your name as you would like it to appear when you send emails from Outlook using your Yahoo! Mail account. Enter your full Yahoo! Mail email address in the E-mail Address field.

Under Logon Information, enter your full Yahoo! Mail email address under User Name (in the form "userName@yahoo.com"), and your Yahoo! Mail password in Outlook's Password field.

By default, the Remember password checkbox is checked: this will ensure that you do not have to type your Yahoo! Mail password whenever you try to send or receive Yahoo! emails from Outlook. Make sure that the other checkbox, "Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA)", is unchecked.

Yahoo! Mail Server Settings for Outlook

As part of the setup to enable Outlook to connect to the Yahoo! Mail service, enter the following information as mail server settings:

- Type  plus.pop.mail.yahoo.com  under Incoming mail server (POP3), and
- Type  plus.smtp.mail.yahoo.com  as Outgoing mail server (SMTP) value.

Now click on the More Settings button: the Internet E-mail Settings dialog will open.

Select the Outgoing Server tab, and check the checkbox labeled "My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication".

Now select the Advanced tab: check the This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL) checkbox, and type 995 under Incoming Server (POP3). Also check the second checkbox below, and type 465 under Outgoing server (SMTP). Right now, your Yahoo! Mail Server Port Numbers section should look just like this:

Optionally leave a copy of Yahoo! emails on the server

The final option of this tab allows Outlook to leave the email messages on the Yahoo! Mail server; this checkbox is unchecked by default. We recommend you check it, so that you can read your Yahoo! emails from Outlook or a web browser without worrying about emails being unavailable for having been downloaded from another location.

Checking your Yahoo! Mail emails from Outlook

You have successfully setup Yahoo! Mail in Outlook! Your Yahoo emails are now being downloaded in your regular Outlook inbox.

If you have setup email accounts in Outlook in addition to Yahoo! Mail, Outlook lets you pick from which email account to send the new email you are composing. From the main toolbar of the new email window, click Account, and a menu will unfold, listing all the email accounts available to Outlook: pick the account you want to send the email from, and Outlook will take care of the rest.

When you have multiple email accounts setup in Outlook and reply to an email, Outlook will automatically use the email account to which this email was sent. Let's say that you have setup in Outlook both your professional email account and your Yahoo! Mail account: if your friend emails you at your Yahoo! Mail account, and you reply from Outlook, Outlook will automatically use your Yahoo! account to reply to that email, even if your default email account happens to be your professional email account.

If you only have a Yahoo! Mail email account setup in Outlook, this will be your default email account, and the one Outlook always uses when sending emails - no need to worry about picking the email account Outlook will use!