[Ham-Mac] Item of Interest to ATT DSL Users being Nagged for Password

[Dick Kriss]

This is a off topic item but may be of interest to anyone using AT&T's DSL and has been nagged to enter the mail password over and over again.

The hard drive in my wife's MacBook Pro died and was replaced by AppleCare with a generic operating system. I used the OS X TimeMachine to restore my wife's settings and files.  The MacBook Pro worked great but my wife could not pop her mail using Microsoft's Outlook for the Mac or Apple's Mail. I could pop my mail from the same laptop but her mail was hosed. Her web mail via Safari or Firefox worked as well as her gmail address.

The error messages said unidentified user ID or password and both Mail and Outlook nagged her to enter the password over and over again. It was obvious there was an issue the ATT servers.

I gave up typing and re-typing the correct mail settings, called ATT several times and then went to the Apple Store. It turned into a major He-Said/She-Said thing with Apple blaming ATT and the Yahoo mail servers and ATT saying it was an Apple issue.  ATT does not provide technical support to Apple's Mail or Microsoft's Outlook for the Mac. I talked to several ATT representatives and they could not fix the issue and had no clue why my wife's mail could not be popped.

After messing with it for way too many hours, I went back to the Apple Store's Genius Bar and the tech was able to confirm problem; however, this tech found and FIXED the problem! It had nothing to do with either Apple or ATT. The problem was with the Yahoo web mail. My wife never really used web mail so her Yahoo web mail was setup using the Classic user interface. As noted above she could login and check mail. The tech at the Apple Store changed her user preference to the new Yahoo user interface.  As soon as he switched her web mail from Classic to the New user interface, the Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook both popped the mail from the Yahoo maintained (for AT&T) mail servers. 

The reason I could pop mail and my wife could not pop mail was because I had selected the New Yahoo user web mail user interface. Per the Apple tech the new Yahoo user interface supports IMAP and the older version may not. He got the mail working but suggested I change all accounts from POP to IMAP which I plan to do as soon as the smoke settles. 

If you are a AT&T DSL customer being nagged to enter your mail password, I recommend you and each member of you family with a sub-account check your web mail settings to use the new version. Each sub-account has its own user interface preference setting.

Yes, it would be nice if the ATT technical staff was trained this issue. 

Thanks for reading 


Dick AA5VU