Email Options?

I have just signed up to BT, although my line does not get activated until next Tuesday. Have been reading various broadband help topics to try and suss out the differences which using BT will cause, I'm getting rather confused about email. I currently use Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client, and have a standard Yahoo email address. BT broadband uses a @btinternet.com address, that is also provided by Yahoo. I would like to continue using Thunderbird for all my email for the time being, and may not even adopt my @btinternet email address, as it means notifying all my contacts of the change. However, reading here http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1070/... it states

"If you have a broadband connection you will only be able to send email when using your BT Yahoo! Mail account settings."

Does this mean that I will no longer be able to use Thunderbird, and if not, how do I transfer Address book etc from there to the BTYahoo account.

There's no problem using Thunderbird with BT mail - it's the settings that have to match the BT service, not the email program.

You can certainly continue to use Thunderbird, that is just an email client. However, the rest of your post implies you are using webmail, rather than POP3/IMAP and SMTP. That confuses me, as the whole point of Thunderbird is that you don't use webmail for the bulk of your emailing, and your Address book would be on your computer.

Do the emails get downloaded to your computer? Is your current Yahoo email address set up in Tools >> Acccount Settings in Thunderbird with POP3/IMAP and SMTP?

Unfortunately the link you give to the BT help doesn't work for me, so I can't read the rest of it to see if that tells me more about the problem.

It is probable that BT mean they are blocking port 25 for other SMTP (email send) services than their own.
If this is the case there are two solutions.

The better of the two may not be provided by Yahoo, but most decent email hosts have their SMTP server listening on more than one port. You should be able to find if Yahoo do this through their Help or FAQ systems. Look for Port 25 blocking and SMTP setup, that sort of thing.

If they do an alternative port then BT may not be blocking that. The BT Help should be telling you exactly what ports are blocked, perhaps in that link that doesn't work for me. You set the alternative port in Thunderbird >> Tools >> Account settings >> Bottom of left-hand menu "Outgoing server (SMTP)".

The other way is to use the BT SMTP server for sending, as they say you must, which you set in Thunderbird at the same place as the alternative port, but you simply make sure in the main "Account Settings" page in Thunderbird you have your Email Address and Reply-to Address set to your existing Yahoo address, leaving the POP3/IMAP settings unchanged.

Does that help, or have I misunderstood?

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 04-May-11 09:21:03)

KP, can you expand on that please? How do I go about it? An idiot's guide would be useful, as I'm not that bright.

Brian

Hi Roberto

From your comments, it seems that I have made my own life more complicated than it need be by using Thunderbird for all my email. I guess it's a legacy thing, having used it before webmail was as popular as it is now, and before I had a Yahoo address myself. Yes my Yahoo emails get downloaded onto my laptop, with POP settings.

Probably the easiet thing to do when my line is activated will be to use the BTYahoo set up from day 1, and just keep Thunderbird as an archive of all my previous messages etc. Unless of course there is a way of importing them and my address book into BTYahoo.

Thank you both for your thoughts on the matter.

Brian

I'm not sure what you are saying there. I think you are still confused, as in fact it's quite simple "once you know how", as things often are.

It still isn't clear to me whether you purely use Thunderbird, or whether you occasionally also use the Webmail side of Yahoo.

If you don't use webmail, then one of us can easily guide you through the changes you need to make to use your current Yahoo through BT.

Ignore what I said about port numbers! That is for purists. The second option I give is 99% as good and works perfectly. The only difference is that if readers of your emails inspect the headers of what you send, the second way they can see it comes from a BT account, the first way they can't.

To nearly everybody that is a totally non-important factor.

How many email addresses/mailboxes do you use?

Or if you want to switch to webmail only, then you should be able to do that on your existing yahoo account and ignore the BT Yahoo one. Their block doesn't apply to webmail.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 04-May-11 11:43:30)

Just add an additional account in Thunderbird to access your new Yahoo account and download the messages to your PC.

An email client is not restricted to just one email account but can have many accounts accessible from each instance (user) of the client.. I have about twenty or thirty email accounts used for specific things. I have three instances of my email client available to me - I launch one of those every morning which checks my 4 primary email addresses and runs all day. Once a day or every few days, I may launch one of the other instances, that then accesses around 20 different low usage email accounts.

It seems my confusion is confusing you Roberto lol

In fact I solely use Thunderbird for email, very, very rarely looking at the webmail side.

Currently I only have 4 email accounts, 1 Yahoo & 1 Gmail for myself, 1 Yahoo account for my wife, and 1 non webmail account from my current ISP, which will cease when I move to BT.
The ISP non Webmail address I NEVER use, my Gmail & my wife's Yahoo accounts are rarely used.

Therefore from what you all seem to be saying is that it is possible to continue using Thunderbird with a few tweaks. However, I think that it is now all clarified in my mind, that when I get activated, I will probably drop Thunderbird and use the BTYahoo system. If I set the BTYahoo site as my home page, then my internet access and email are all in the same place. It also makes checking email easier when I'm away on holiday if I need to.

Thanks all for your input, I think I know where I'm going now

Brian

In reply to a post by dorsetlad:

However, reading here http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1070/... , it states

That link doesn't compute, as you ran the comma into it. Have corrected in above.

Fine, though personally I loath Webmail for day-to-day use. I find it cumbersome.

However, you still land yourself with the need to notify everyone of the new address. Surely it would be simpler just to drop Thunderbird and use those existing accounts all through Webmail? Ignore the new BT Yahoo one?

I don't know about your gmail and yahoo setups, but I would expect you could export your address book from Thunderbird in a form they could import, saving you having to re-input them all. In Thunderbird, go into Address Book >> Export, and at the bottom choosing file type CSV is probably the best. Have a look in yahoo and gmail on webmail first and see if they can import CSV files. Having said that, TAB delimited may be safer.

Have a look at see what is available, common to all.