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Use Evolution to Access your Yahoo E-mail System (Ubuntu 8.04)

**NOTE: You can only get POP access and fowarding if you sign up for Yahoo! Mail Plus.

You can access your Yahoo mail system using a Ubuntu e-mail program instead of using the yahoo.com web-site through a web-browser. Using Yahoo mail in this way can give you improvements in functionality - eg. better formatting when reading and writing e-mails, grouping e-mails by thread, creating search folders, and having calenders, memos and tasks in the same program that you view e-mail. This guide shows how to set up the 'Evolution' e-mail client to work with the Yahoo mail system. (There are other e-mail clients available - eg. Thunderbird)

Note that this documentation is based on my experience setting up an Australian yahoo.com.au account. Settings will vary for other locations but should be available on your Yahoo web-site. At one stage, this ability was not available for yahoo.com accounts. I don't know if this is still the case.

Enable POP Access at the Yahoo Web-Site

Click on the 'Options' link at your Yahoo mail web-site, then on the 'POP Access and Forwarding' link.

Enable POP Access for your Yahoo account by clicking on the appropriate radio button. This is important.

Click on the 'View POP Settings' link. Take note of the settings that Yahoo advises for POP clients - for example ..

    Incoming Mail Server (POP3): pop.mail.yahoo.com.au
    Use SSL, port: 995
    Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): smtp.mail.yahoo.com.au
    Use SSL, port: 465, use authentication

Install and Configure Evolution

Using Synaptic Package Manager, install 'evolution'.

Run 'Evolution Mail' from the Ubuntu main menu.

When prompted for the POP server, use the information collected above - including the port number

  • - for me, it was -    pop.mail.yahoo.com.au:995

For encryption, specify SSL and for authentication, specify Password

When asked for your username, do NOT enter your full name as Yahoo wrongly advises (eg. fred.smith@yahoo.com.au), but enter your short name (eg. fred.smith). This is important.

When prompted with the 'Receiving Options' dialog, tick the Leave Messages on Server checkbox. If you do not, your Inbox on the yahoo mail web-site will be deleted after a copy of your Inbox is transferred to Evolution on your PC.

When prompted for the SMTP server, use the information collected above - including the port number

  • - for me, it was -    smtp.mail.yahoo.com.au:465

For encryption, specify SSL and for authentication, specify PLAIN

This is all that is required! When you run 'Evolution' it will prompt you for your Yahoo password, and then connect to the Yahoo POP server and download all your existing mail to your PC.

Note that only the contents the standard folders (Inbox, Sent, etc.) are transferred to Evolution via POP, so you need to disable all Yahoo rules if you want to view all your e-mail in Evolution. You can then make up rules in Evolution, instead.


UsingYahooWithEvolution (last edited 2009-07-31 21:05:24 by nr5-216-196-212-199)