How to configure Outlook for Yahoo

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Applies to
Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 Microsoft Outlook® 2002

You can use Outlook with many Yahoo! Mail e-mail accounts. However, free Web browser-based Yahoo! Mail accounts based in China, Taiwan, or the United States can only be used in Outlook if you have a paid subscription Yahoo! Mail account that includes POP3 access and forwarding.

You can receive your Yahoo! Mail e-mail messages by using Outlook from most places with an Internet connection. Yahoo! Mail provides you access to an authenticated SMTP server — allowing you to send e-mail messages using Outlook from your Yahoo! Mail account when you use another Internet service, such as at your office or when traveling.

Note Yahoo also provides mail services to partner Internet service providers (ISPs) (ISP: A business that provides access to the Internet for such things as electronic mail, chat rooms, or use of the World Wide Web. Some ISPs are multinational, offering access in many locations, while others are limited to a specific region.). All of these accounts can use be used with Outlook. See the chart at the end of this article to see if your e-mail account is included.

Do one of the following:

Add your Yahoo! Mail e-mail account

1. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
2. Click Add a new e-mail account, and then click Next.
3. Click POP3, and then click Next.
4. Under User Information, do the following:
   1. In the Your Name box, type your full name the way that you want it to appear to other people.
   2. In the E-mail Address box, type your Member ID (or username), followed by the @ symbol and domain name.
5. Under Server Information, do the following:
   1. In the Incoming mail server (POP3) box, type the server name from the chart below that corresponds to your e-mail address.
   2. In the Outgoing mail server (SMTP) box, type the server name from the chart below that corresponds to your e-mail address.
6. Under Logon Information, do the following:
   1. In the User Name box, type your Yahoo Member ID (or username). Do not include the @ symbol or domain name.
   2. In the Password box, type your password.
   3. Select the Remember password check box.

      Note You have the option to have Outlook remember your password by typing it in the Password box and selecting the Remember password check box. Having Outlook remember your password means that you won't have to type your password each time you access the account; however, it also means that the account is vulnerable to anyone who has access to your computer.

      Use strong passwords that combine uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Weak passwords don't mix these elements. Strong password: Y6dh!et5. Weak password: House27. Passwords should be 8 or more characters in length. A pass phrase that uses 14 or more characters is better. For more information, see Help protect your personal information with strong passwords.

      It is critical that you remember your password. If you forget your password, Microsoft cannot retrieve it. Store the passwords that you write down in a secure place away from the information that they help protect.

7. To verify that your account is working, click Test Account Settings. If there is missing or incorrect information, such as your password, you will be prompted to supply or correct it. Make sure your computer is connected to the Internet.
8. Click More Settings.
9. On the General tab, under Mail Account, type Yahoo! Mail.
10. Click the Outgoing Server tab, and then select the My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication check box.
11. Click Use same settings as my incoming mail server, and then click OK.
12. Click Next, and then click Finish.

Notes

• Do not select the Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA) check box.
• Unless specified by Yahoo! Mail, all server and address entries are typed in lowercase letters.

Remove your Yahoo! Mail e-mail account

1. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
2. Click View or change existing e-mail accounts, and then click Next.
3. Click the Yahoo! Mail e-mail account that you want to remove, and then click Remove.
4. Click Finish.

How to trace an IP from an Email

Here’s a quick how-to guide on how you can track email to it’s originating location by figuring out the email’s IP address and looking it up. I have found this to be quite useful on many occasions for verification purposes since I receive lots of emails daily due to my blog. Tracking the IP address of an email sender does require looking at some technical details, so be ready to dig your heels in!

There are basically two steps involved in the process of tracking an email: find the IP address in the email header section and then look up the location of the IP address.

Finding the IP address of an email sender in GMail, Yahoo Mail, and Outlook

Let’s go ahead and take a look at how you would do this for Google, Yahoo and Outlook since those are the most popular email clients.

Google’s Gmail

1. Log into your account and open the email in question.

2. Click on the down arrow that’s to the right of the Reply link. Choose Show Original from the list.

Now here’s the technical part that I was telling you about earlier! You need to look for the lines of text that start with “Received: from“. It might be easier to simply press Cntrl + F and perform a search for that phase. You’ll notice that there are several Received From’s in the message header. This is because the message header contains the IP addresses of all of servers involved in routing that email to you.

To find the first computer that originally sent the email, you’ll have to find the Received From that’s farthest DOWN. As you can see from the above image, the first one is from a computer called “aseem” with the IP address 72.204.154.191. Then it was routed to my ISP’s server at eastrmmtao104.cox.net and so on and so forth till it got to your email server.

The computer aseem is my personal home computer and that’s my public IP address for my house! I’ll go through Yahoo and Outlook before talking about tracking the location of that IP address.

Yahoo Mail Beta

1. Log into your account and open the email (if you’re using Yahoo Mail Beta with the new preview interface, make sure you double-click on the email so that it opens in a new tab)

2. At the top right, you’ll see there is a drop-down option where Standard Header is selected by default.

3. Click on it and choose Full Header.

Again, you’ll see the same information as before, just in a different window:

Microsoft Outlook

1. Open the email in Outlook by double-clicking on it

2. Go to View at the top menu (the menu options for the email, not the main Outlook window) and choose Options.

You’ll get a dialog box where you can set the message options and at the bottom you’ll see the Internet Headers box. For some silly reason, the box is very small and you have to scroll a lot, so it’s best to simply copy and paste the text into Notepad to view it more easily.

Tracking the location of an IP address

Now that we have our originating IP address of 72.204.154.191, let’s find out where that is! You can do this by perform a location lookup on the IP address. My favorites are IP2Location and GeoBytes IP Locator.

GeoBytes gave me a big map of New Orleans, LA along with a bunch of other information about the location itself.

IP2Location also gave me the same information pretty much, including the ISP (Cox Communications). Of course, this is correct since I live in New Orleans!

If you want more information, you can do a WHOIS database search also. My favorite one is the ARIN WHOIS Database Search. This will give you information on who hosts that IP address and their registration information. You can always contact them to try and find more information on that particular IP address.

Have fun tracking down those emails! Questions, comments, or suggestions? Post a comment!