I have a yahoo email address that I’ve had for years. I am growing tired of logging into the site and dealing with their interface every time I want to read my email. A friend of mine told me I could use Microsoft Outlook to read my email and never have to do that again. How can I set this up? And, how does it work? Thanks again.

-Yahoonomore

Dear Yahoo, first off, congratulations on taking your next step towards the modern computing world. While webmail is very convenient and yahoo is one of the most popular webmail sites. I am one for dealing with the fewest programs/button pushes possible to do things on my computer. Your friend is very right. There are a lot of programs that people can use to view webmail as long as the specific webmail supports POP3 (post office protocol). In this article, we are going to focus on Outlook, mainly because it’s the most common.

Before we talk about setting up your email in Outlook, we need to talk about the email protocols that make it possible. POP3 is what your email client (Outlook) will use to receive mail. It is an application layer protocol. Normally POP will connect to that server, download all the email, and then delete it off of the server. If you have ever heard some of your geekier friends talk about port 110 that is because this is the port POP will listen to over your firewall in order to perform its actions.

When talking about email protocols we also need to cover IMAP (internet message access protocol). IMAP is also an application layer protocol and works similarly to POP3. Generally, the email is left on the server until the user manually deletes it. IMAP also allows for temporary local caching of mail and thus supports both online and offline usage. While IMAP is definitely the less prevalent used method it does have some advantages over POP. First off, it normally stays connected to the server. This allows for faster response times. Also, with IMAP multiple clients can connect to the same mailbox. While there are small differences, chances are you will be using POP3 when you configure your webmail.

While POP3 and IMAP allows you to receive your mail, they don’t know about sending ail. To do this Outlook uses SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol). SMTP does not care about the content of the message. It is simply the ‘envelope’ the message is in. As far as an email client goes, SMTP really only sends the mail to the server for relaying. It is there the message is authenticated and sent on.

So now that we understand how it works, let me go over setting up yahoo email in outlook. First off, most webmail sites; yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc., have these instructions somewhere. This is good to look for because it provides specific server addresses, which you will need. To setup yahoo first you’ll need to open outlook. If this is for the first time, it will prompt you to add new email account. You are going to want to pick Internet Email, under which will mention the protocols that we have been talking about. In the next screen, all you are going to want to do is fill in the blanks with your name, email address, username and password for the site. The portion of this that might scare you is ‘server information.’ This is all pretty simple. For yahoo, first select POP3 from the dropdown and then use pop.mail.yahoo.com for the incoming mail server and smtp.mail.yahoo.com for the outgoing mail server. Most sites make the name of the address simple like that to avoid user confusion. Finally, you are going to want to test user account (on the right of that window). This process is pretty much the same no matter what site you are talking about.

Hopefully we here at It’s Geektime have again shed light on all your PC problems. If you have any questions in the future please feel free to let us know. Finally, remember, when you’re scared and feeling technically unsure. Never fear, IT guy is here!!!