Use Your Email App with Yahoo Mail

No doubt that Yahoo! Mail is one of the most popular web mail programs. One problem for people is they want to be able to send and receive Yahoo! Mail using their email application. They prefer not use the Yahoo! web interface. Since Yahoo! doesn't provide POP3 server settings, this has been an issue. Using a free open source program called YPOPs!, you can use popular email programs like Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora and more to get your Yahoo! email.

If you've not heard of YPOPs!, don't worry. The program has been around for awhile as an open source project called YahooPOPS. The project was started in 2002 by Anuj Seth. This was the same year Yahoo! stopped free POP access. Some people get scared off by open source software, but YPOPs! is stable and well supported.

How YPOPs! Works
Unlike some web based email systems, Yahoo! Mail doesn't offer POP3 access. POP3 is a popular protocol email programs use for getting email. Some of you have tried to set up Yahoo! Mail with your email program such as Outlook Express, but ran into a problem when entering the POP3 server information. The company stopped free POP access unless you upgraded to Yahoo! Mail Plus.

YPOPs! gets around this problem by emulating a POP3/SMTP mail server so you can use almost any email client. The program appears to do this without violating Yahoo! Mail’s Terms and Conditions. Of course, that's a legal determination a lawyer should make if you're worried.

The program quietly sits in your system tray and acts as a proxy. You might think of this proxy as your Yahoo! Mail agent. You only need to configure the program once and you can use it with multiple email programs. As example, I can retrieve my Yahoo! Mail using either Mozilla Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook Express. I don't maintain separate configuration files for each email program

YPOPs! Compatible Email Programs
The program works with a variety of third party email programs. Currently, instructions are available for the following email programs:

* Calypso 3.X
* Eudora 5.x
* Forte Mail Reader v 1.93
* IncrediMail Xe
* Lotus Notes R6
* Microsoft Outlook 2000
* Microsoft Outlook XP
* Microsoft Outlook 2003
* Mozilla Mail
* Mozilla Thunderbird
* Netscape Mail 4.x
* nPOP
* Opera M2
* Outlook Express
* Outlook Express 6
* Pegasus Mail 3.12


Setting up the program was easier than I thought. Some mail emulators I've used before have had complex configuration panels. Not so with YPOPs! as most settings were clear.

Click to enlarge

Clicking an item on the left frame displayed settings on the right. Although there is no built-in help, it really isn't needed. The one area I did stumble was the Download Folders section. I had several folders on Yahoo! Mail and wished to maintain the same folder structure. For some reason, I thought YPOPs! would show me my folder names. It doesn't. You simply type the folder name and press the Add button.

One suggestion on the Download Folders section is uncheck the Bulk Mail folder. I think Yahoo! Mail does a good job with their spam filter and I see no reason why I want to pull those items down to my PC. Periodically, I go to the web and see if there were any items misclassified.

For the most part, I kept the default settings for the program. You may need to tweak some options based on your situation. Your firewall may also want you to grant access to the program.
Setting up Your Yahoo! Mail Account

Once you've configured YPOPs!, you need to configure your email program since it's the one communicating with Yahoo! Mail. On the YPOPs! Email website, there is a dedicated page for configuring your email program to use your Yahoo! Mail account information.

These instruction pages give you the steps you need to set up your account. The steps vary between email programs, but the main points to remember are:

1. Enter your Yahoo! Mail username and password in the required fields

2. Use 127.0.0.1 as your incoming and outgoing server names

3. Increase your server timeout settings

4. Enter the correct Reply To: address.

The email instructions vary based on author. For example, the Outlook Express 6 instruction set was correct, but I wish the author had put line breaks between each step. To remedy this issue, I copied the text into notepad and added the carriage returns to make it easier to read.

I've used YPOPs! with Outlook Express 6 and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5. Thunderbird took a little longer to set up. I somehow managed to have the wrong port setting. The error was clearly mine, but it was nice to know the program provides a ypops.log which can help in troubleshooting problems. There is also an active YPOPs! forum where users can post questions. If you hit any snags, the forum is a great resource since someone may have already posted an answer.

Now that I have my programs configured, I'm appreciating Yahoo! Mail even more. I've always relied on Yahoo! Mail to handle many of my newsletters subscriptions. Seldom do I subscribe to offers using my primary email address. With YPOPS!, I can scan and read these emails much faster than I could on the web. And, I can't say I miss the ads.

Update Jan 22, 2007: Version 0.8.8 now works with the new Yahoo! email system.

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