How to send & receive Yahoo Mail (free version) from POP applications

Normally to send and receive email from Yahoo via an POP application like Outlook or Thunderbird you must upgrade your yahoo email account to a premium account. Apparently yahoo is (unofficially) allowing pop access via their free mail in some situations.

Here are some ways to possibly access your free yahoo email account via Outlook, Thunderbird or other POP applications:

Procedure 1:

It may work already for your email account but the page to activate POP does not appear on your yahoo mail settings page. To see if your particular account is already set up to use with POP try clicking on this: activate yahoo POP. If you see this page you are in business:

Enable the Web & POP Access save the setting and add your yahoo address in you POP application with the setting revealed by clicking on the View POP Settings.

If the above does not work try the next two procedures.

Procedure 2. Temporarily Enable Yahoo Asia as “Preferred Content”

1. Log into your yahoo mail account with this URL: http://mail.yahoo.com
2. Go to Options -> Mail Options (upper right corner):
   
3. Go to Accounts section (left side menu). Click on “Add or edit an account”:
   
4. Go to “Account Information” section (you may need to enter your password again at this point):
   
5. Go to “Set language, site,  timezone” under the Account Settings section (scroll down some on the page):
6. Change your “Preferred Content” to Yahoo Asia!
   
   Make sure you click on the “Finished” button.
7. Click on the “I Accept” button on the next page that appears.
8. Yahoo will ask you for your password again. At this point simply close out that window and go to http://mail.yahoo.com (you should still be logged in).
9. Go to “Options” -> “Mail Options” (upper right corner).
10. Go to “POP & Forwarding” section and Click on “Set up or edit POP & Forwarding”
    
11. Enable Web & POP Access (click on the radio button and click on save):
12. Click on “View POP Settings” to get the incoming and outgoing mail server settings you need to set up your POP application:
    
13. Go to your POP application (Outlook, Thunderbird etc) and add yahoo email account with the information acquired in step 12.
14. Go back to Yahoo mail via http://mail.yahoo.com and log in.
15. Repeat steps 2 through 7 and reset your “Preferred Content” to Yahoo! US in English under Account Settings – Set language, site and time zone. Click on finish and the I Accept button.

You should be all set, if not try the next procedure (the least preferred method).

Procedure 3. Install Ypops as described here: How to Use yahoo with outlook 2007 for free

I was able to get all of my yahoo mail accounts to work in Outlook 2007 using Procedure 1 & 2 above. Note: The free gmail comes with POP enabled already – I prefer gmail over yahoo mail hands down.

Hope this is helps… please leave a comment if you have any questions or more tips.