Yahoo Mail free POP access

by Dragos



For a long time, Yahoo allowed POP access only for Premium accounts, so people used custom applications, like Y!Pops to have this feature. This is not longer the case. To enable the POP3 access for your free yahoo mail account, all you have to change is the preferred content, setting it to

Image 1: Don\'t be afraid to click the "Add or edit an account" link. It will take you to the old Yahoo Mail interface, but this change is only temporary.
Select, the
link on the left of the windows that opens. From the window that opens, select “Account Information” on the left. Then, set:


Click on Edit, then set the Preferred Content to Yahoo Asia
Logout and login.
Then, you can enable POP access and change settings, by clicking, from the mail inbox:


Update
: A commenter suggested that, if you cannot find the POP & Forwarding option you should try this direct link:



April 23, 2009 3:13 am

Thanks so much, I’ve been trying to get yahoo on my thunderbird forever and I have Liunx so it wasn’t easy. This way was great and save me a big headache.





May 5, 2009 11:26 am

Does it work for anybody ’cause after I change the content to Yahoo Asia, I no longer can’t find POP & Forwarding in the Options -> Mail Options, so I cannot enable the Pop access.
Thank you



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May 5, 2009 11:51 am

It did work for every account (free @yahoo.com accounts) I tried and got no complaints from readers until now…





May 9, 2009 7:38 pm

…It works perfect now….I don’t know why it didn’t work first time…maybe I didn’t do it the right way….thanx a lot…







September 30, 2009 5:11 am

Dragos- have you tried Outlook ’03? not sure waht pop in and out should be







January 28, 2010 3:46 am

LHM
Hi,
Changing Settings to Yahoo Asia worked for me. I think. Gmail is still importing everything from my Yahoo account. Thanks a lot for the tip. Now I can have all my mails in one place. Now to figure out how to make Thunderbird answer emails from my separate accounts AS SEPARATE identities. Right now, it’s just using the default ID i’ve fed in.
Thank you for your time
Jaimon Joseph
Ph: 9899692342







January 30, 2010 3:38 pm

sal, dragos. cred c-ai facut o treaba f. buna. totusi, din pacate, la mine nu functioneaza, imi apare msj:
We Apologize
The service you are requesting is not currently for sale.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Am incercat ore intregi de mai multe ori si cu trick-ul sugerat. Am incercat si pe UK sau NZ. Pana acum nu m-am prins. Am vazut ca nu sunt singurul. Poate mai ai si alte idei… Ar fi binevenite.
Mersi







May 10, 2010 12:13 pm

It looks like Yahoo has stopped free POP access across all Yahoo servers, foreign and domestic.
yPOPs also no longer works. Firefox 3.0.6.







December 21, 2010 6:40 am

The link redirects me to Yahoo! Premium Services and it says that:
“We Apologize
The service you are requesting is not currently for sale.
We apologize for the inconvenience.”







April 2, 2011 2:10 pm

I managed to do this last year and luckily my yahoo account still works on my iphone with POP but my new laptop cannot set it up. I just don’t have the option to change my content preference. It’s gone!







July 18, 2009 10:21 pm

cris – i’m having the same problem as u did…can u specify what the “right way” is..





May 6, 2009 3:46 am

So far I don’t see a:
“Then, set: Preferred Content: Yahoo Asia,”
in my newly created “ymail” account. I noticed the recent comments were from today…does anyone else have a ymail account with the same issue/or successful attempt?



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May 6, 2009 6:41 pm

I did not test this, but I find it improbable that ymail users cannot change their preferred content (because preferred content gives the news that are shown to them), so, it may not appear where the screen shot says, but it certainly should be somewhere, you just have to find it.





May 8, 2009 3:11 pm

Uhm, I too got lost in “Options -> Mail Options -> POP & Forwarding”.
I can’t find it before or after changing to Asia.



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May 15, 2009 5:46 pm

You have to set Preferred Content to Yahoo Asia first, and then it will appear. If you have already done that, try to log out and then log in again, maybe that helps.







October 12, 2009 2:32 am

You are the man! Was using ypops in windows before I switched to linux so I could download and sort my emails, but it would only grab new emails and intermittently grab old emails that I set as unread so I was never able to get all of my emails. This works perfectly even though the names of some of the links have changed a bit. Thanks a lot.




thank you Dragos for making this blog. it works well on mine…. no matter what other people said as they dont want to try to understand what you mention on the top step by step and word by word. For me, its incredible clear instruction and really save my times after i try to find it everywhere and no ones can help me except your blog!!!! Do you have other blog which will help me in the future?







March 19, 2010 11:41 am

Dragos ,
Did they terminate the service for pop and forwarding. bcoz m tryin using yahoo Asia on another email and its not workin



April 1, 2010 12:35 pm

Thanks for your answer.
The trouble was temporary. Solved after a couple of hours.
Sorry, i should have been more patient.







May 15, 2009 11:13 pm

Thank you so much .
Goodbye Freepops and Yahoopops.
One problem , though.
Worked perfectly on three old accounts.
On a new one from today , the option of POP3
was lost after changing to Yahoo-Asia.
Please , Help.





May 20, 2009 11:27 pm

I created a new Ymail account today, set Preferred Content to Yahoo Asia, and went into Mail Options (after logging out, logging back in, and trying the same with a different browser).. there is no POP3 and Forwarding link for me



June 3, 2009 1:21 am

THANKS A LOT, TRIED FOR LONG TIME just saw ur post today & now its working.
Need to ask that only the inbox messages are imported, but my folders that I created in mail account are not detected.How to fetch my personal folders & messages.(I am using Thunderbird latest by today).



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June 3, 2009 1:31 am

Just move the mail from your personal folders to the yahoo mail inbox, using the yahoo mail web interface. There is (not to my knowledge anyhow) not an alternative means to do this. Also, future mail that arrive in a personal folder will not be downloaded using POP, so you might want to disable your filters.





June 5, 2009 3:23 am

I am still having issues locating any “POP3″ options after successfully switching to Yahoo Asia. I would like to know if anyone has completed this successfully with a “new Ymail” account. Thanks in advance.





June 14, 2009 4:18 pm

Out of 11 accounts, changing the “content” worked on 10 of them, but did not work on one. That one will not offer POP/Forwarding, only an upgrade to Mail Plus.
It seems that some “content” other than Yahoo Asia will also work to do this; two accounts worked because they had “content” set to Yahoo UK.
Thanks for the tip. It is very useful.





June 17, 2009 8:18 am

Hi Dragos,
I tried all the procedures described by you. But with no success. The procedures followed by me are :
1. Changed the ‘Preferred Content’ to ‘Yahoo! Asia’ (Tried ‘Yahoo! UK’ also) and settings saved.
2. Then logged out and logged-in again. Went to ‘Mail Options’
But there is no ‘Pop & Forwarding’ option found for my account.
I have a doubt, is there anything to do with the Timezone settings while updating the Preferred Content ?
Thanks and Regards,
Sunil





June 23, 2009 6:33 pm

Can u tell me how I can get this to work with Entorage/Mac. I’ve done this and it’s just not working. I get this error message: The server for account “yahoo” returned the error “authorization failed”. Then it tells me to check my username/password and security settings. I never even touched the security settings. I just followed the exact directions. Ugh



June 24, 2009 9:34 pm

Its no more available on Yahoo Asia. It was running successfully till last month. My friend suggested me your blog saying that he was able to do it, he got his new ID last month. Basically I love Address guard facility of Yahoo and I get that facility in Yahoo! India. Now after getting those I want to forward it to my Google account(I love Google labels also).
Please help me out with any other Yahoo service which is providing this for now.





July 9, 2009 5:05 pm

They must have changed this setup, I have 3 yahoo accounts, this worked on 1 (my original account) the other 2 are newer and once I change it the the yahoo!asia it no longer has the POP option, just the vaction response…any ideas on a workaround? luckly the one it works on is my main account that I use, but I would like to get them all to work with the POP3





June 8, 2010 8:26 am

Dragos, nu pot sa trimit mesaje de pe outlook expres, (iar pe outlook nici nu primesc nici nu trimit)
pe outlook express imi da eroarea asta: The message could not be sent because the server rejected the sender’s e-mail address. The sender’s e-mail address was ‘sorin_suruceanu@yahoo.com’. Subject ‘test’, Account: ‘pop.mail.yahoo.com’, Server: ‘smtp.mail.yahoo.com.au’, Protocol: SMTP, Server Response: ’530 authentication required – for help go to



July 23, 2009 7:36 am

My previous post was not so clear. Sorry, I try again.
By using the ASIA trick, I was succesful accessing Yahoo POP with one Yahoo email account. I did it about a monthe ago.
A week ago, I tried the trick on another yahoo account, and today, yet on another. No success whatsoever. Cannot enable the POP as it does not appear in my “Asian” options.
Maybe yahoo has some renovations and that is the cause, I dont know. I will wait a little





August 8, 2009 1:51 pm

Kudos. Now we can once more expectedly control what stays on the server, view our stored emails anytime we want, and especially do it all without:
1.) Waiting until the yahoo ads load.
2.) Having to look at annoying ads that invariably get clicked on.
3.) Having to pay Y’ to use our POP3 applications.
4.) Burdening Y’s server with for those of us that don’t want our business kept on a server.
5.) Burdening Y’s server by assuming responsibility for our email security*.
The latter is the excuse Y’ reportedly tells our IP’s as to why our yahoo mail quit working w/Outlook, OE6, etc., when in reality Y’ simply decided to try and bilk users out of money for nothing, ie; by unannouncedly changing our account’s password only to the extent that our YPops quits working and then we’re supposed to buy into Y’s semi-hijacking of our emails in order to extort money from us. Just my opinion.





August 25, 2009 6:26 am

Did anyone of you who switch (my worked) starting to get inline ads in the email? this just started recently (this weekend) with ads for ymail and rocketmail. It never happened for me and i have been using the free yahoo mail, oh, since early 1990.
I ‘switched’ about a month ago thanks to the directions on this site! my other free yahoo account (reside in US) has no inline message ads.
Am i giving up my pop access for inline ads?
thanks.





December 20, 2009 1:47 am

I tried this with a Yahoo! account several months ago, and it worked like a charm. I just tried it with another Yahoo! account, doing the exact-same thing (setting to Yahoo! Asia), and I get an error message, “pop not allowed for user”.
Although, I have to say that things look a bit different now in Yahoo!. Here’s what I did: Options > Mail Options >Accounts > Add or edit an account > Account information > (typing in of password) > Set language, site, and time zone > New Setting: Yahoo Asia. After that, it keeps asking for my password. When I sign out and sign back in again, the settings are “Yahoo Asia”, but POP doesn’t work.





December 20, 2009 1:58 am

I solved my own problem: After activating POP, I got the following error message: “The RETR command did not succeed. Error retrieving a message. Mail server pop.mail.yahoo.com responded: problem retrieving message.” Thunderbird showed me that it was trying to retrieve 128 messages, even though I had no message in my inbox. Thinking this was weird, I signed in through my browser and found out that there were 128 messages in the “Spam” folder. So, I deleted those, sent a new message to myself, and it worked. Apparently, it got confused by Yahoo!’s Spam folder.





December 27, 2009 11:47 am

Thanks, man! It works great!…after ours of failure now it does it!…There could be a reason why some new accounts can’t access to the pop menu even with the Asia content on… old accounts (mine is 8 years old and I didn’t need any content change) were created with an old yahoo-user agreement before plu$ accounts appeared. Those rights cannot be reversed while new free-account users get a new ‘deal’. Anyhow, it did work to me. Thanks again





January 18, 2010 11:34 am

Hello to all the happy POP Accessors.
and a big thank you to Mr. Dragos
Actually the thing is that I created a new mail ID at “xxx at ymail dot com” and I wanted to forward all of the mails to “yyy at gmail dot com”
I thought of accessing the Ymails by means of POP access and forwarding by changing the region to Asia like I did with my other Yahoo Ids.
But, to my surprise there was no link of POP access and forwarding even after changing the region.

I researched with the link also and found out by selecting the mails to be FORWARDED to my Gmail rather than POP Accessing removes the link of ‘POP AND FORWARDING’ from Yahoo Options and your mails are never forwarded only POP access thing works perfectly.
So, the gist of my story guys is, if you are enabling the access by means of LINK then fetch your mails by the means of POP Access (only that works) not by FORWARDING.
Cheers….
Regards:
Abhishek.





March 7, 2010 2:17 am

Thank you so very much!
Multumesc tare mult!
Am folosit ani de zile extensia Webmail a Modzev-ului impreuna cu componenta yahoo. De vreo saptamana a incetat sa functioneze. Nu am incercat altceva din cauza unei chestii foarte dubioase. Am 2 conturi yahoo.com. Unul de 10 ani (care nu se mai putea accesa) si altul de maxim 2 ani. Care se acceseaza chiar si in momentul de fata. Setarile in thunderbird sunt identice. Setarile pe web sunt identice. Si totusi unul vrea iar celalalt nu mai vrea.
Ciudat…
Pe langa multumiri as da si o bere, doua…



May 10, 2010 7:20 am

Nooo! Hours of surfing through web pages but still can’t get it to work. I am set to Yahoo Asia sucessfully. I do get the POP & Forwarding option. I make the changes and I save. Outlook Express 6 or Microsoft Outlook SP3 don’t download anything. In fact they do not even manage to log into yahoo! I cannot send, I cannot recieve.
I tried the forwarding option to my other non-Yahoo account and I do get a message from Yahoo with a confirmation code. Following the instruction and entering the confirmation code I still cannot recieve any mail from the Yahoo account.
Tried with and without SSL checked, changed port numbers to 995 and 465 or left the 25 & 110 defaults ports, tried with “my server requires autentication” checked and unchecked, different combinations and nothing!
ERROR MESSAGES:
Outlook Express
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The connection to the server has failed. Account: ‘Yahoo!’, Server: ‘pop.mail.yahoo.com’, Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10060, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E
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Microsoft Outlook
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Task ‘Yahoo – Recieving’ reported error (0×80042108):’Outlook is unable to connect to your incoming (POP3)e-mail server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).’
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What ELSE to do?!





May 23, 2010 6:01 pm

Tried this last night with an existing Yahoo account and IT WORKED. Tried it today with a new account that I just created and IT DIDN’T WORK.
CONCLUSION: If you create a new Yahoo account and try to switch it to Yahoo Asia to get POP and forwarding abilities, you’re out of luck. But if you have an existing Yahoo account then you are “grandfathered” in. I’m not sure how long you have to have owned it–in other words, I don’t know when the cutoff date was for their no-POP-policy but the account I used successfully has been around since 1996.
Anyway, for those having problems here are the easy steps:
1) Make sure you’re not trying to create a fresh Yahoo! account and attempt this hack, it won’t work (see above).
2) Sign In (you should be at your main mail page; if not, point your browser to mail.yahoo.com).
3) Click on OPTIONS in the upper right hand corner, then choose MAIL CLASSIC in the dropdown box.
4) You get a pop-up box to confirm that you want to switch to Yahoo Mail Classic. Click yes.
5) Again, click on OPTIONS in the upper right hand corner, then choose MAIL OPTIONS in the dropdown box.
6) You’ll be brought to a new screen. On the left hand side click on ACCOUNT INFORMATION.
7) Now you’re brought to a screen asking for your password. Enter it.

You’re now in your Account Info screen. Close to the bottom of the screen you will see “Account Settings” Underneath that you want to click on the option for “SET LANGUAGE, SITE AND TIME ZONE”
9) Once again you are brought to a new screen. Next to where it says “Regional Site and Language” is a dropdown box. Find and select “YAHOO! ASIA”. As long as you’re here you may also want to make sure that your time zone is correct.
10) Click Save
11) Go back to the main Yahoo mail screen (easiest way to do this is to point your browser to mail.yahoo.com)
12) Click on OPTIONS in the upper right hand corner, then choose MAIL OPTIONS in the dropdown box.
13) You’ll be brought to the same screen you were in step 6 but now on the left hand side you will see an option for “POP & FORWARDING”
That’s pretty much it. Go ahead and set up your POP.





May 24, 2010 12:48 pm

Great job! Worked like a charm. Downloading messages now. Yahoo has been going south for about 4 years, but particularly in the last 2. I am so over it. The way it was in 97-2002 or so was perfect. THe only thing I can see they have done right is saving drafts automagically as you type them. Otherwise they have gotten so slow and bulky and they are trying to shove social networking down my throat. The calender and contacts lists are getting worse, not better. If I wanted gamil I would have been on gmail. I liked my yahoo email the way it was. There was no need to change it. I would have gladly paid for it. Instead, they are trying to compete with other free services.





September 9, 2010 3:42 pm

Back in the day when Yahoo was still being miserly with their account sizes (even reducing the size of new accounts from 6 megs down to 4 megs) I found myself in constant need of more space. So I kept creating new Yahoo accounts. Finally Gmail came out and forced Yahoo and Hotmail to quit playing games (at least with account sizes).
So last year I finally took the time to transfer all my archived emails over from Yahoo to Outlook. But for some reason I got lazy and didn’t transfer the emails from the last account.
Today I converted this last account to Yahoo Asia and the POP / Forwarding options still didn’t show up. I tried all the other methods like cutting-and-pasting URLs from the older Yahoo Asia accounts that had the POP/Forwarding option. But still no luck. I tried changing to Yahoo UK/Ireland, and that didn’t work.
And then, as a last-ditch effort before resorting to YPOPS! I logged back out and switched back to Sendai, Japan (including the correct Japan time zone) and all of a sudden the POP / Forwarding worked! Totally weird, but I am extremely thankful it finally worked.
All I can say is that Yahoo’s settings options are such a tangled buggy piecemeal mess that if you mess around enough it should eventually work. All I can say is keep messing around and eventually you will make it. I did!!!





November 19, 2010 4:39 pm

Salutare Dragos!
M-am tot chinuit de vreo cateva zile sa configurez o adresa de e-mail sa ruleze prin Outlook.
Dupa ce am urmat pasii mentionati de tine, imi rezulta urmatoarele:
General
Signature
Spam
Disposable Email Addresses
Filters
Accounts
Vacation Response
Contacts
Calendar
Notepad
Account Information
Deci nu am optiunea de pop & forewarding.
Am sters spam-urile, folderele extra, am golit toate mesajele.
Mentionez ca este un cont creat acum vreo 4 luni.
Pe un cont de-al meu mai vechi a mers.
Dar pe mine ma intereseaza pe contul mai nou sa folosesc acest sistem cu outlook.
Merci anticipat pt. raspuns.
Ilie, Sb





February 5, 2011 4:15 am

I beg to differ, this still works. I was able to enable Asia as my area of content, in 1 tab, in in the other was able to visit mail options and had pop contained within it. then proceeded to change content area back to US, with POP enabled, and it remained enabled. But then again I’ve had my yahoo account since 6th grade … and am now 25 so a great number of years, so I am still under the original TOS, as it said when switching to Asia content, that it simply had same terms, just a little more was added to it. So if you can recover of obtain a VERY old account you most likely will be able to do this.





April 29, 2011 9:06 pm

I have had a free yahoo.com account for probably 10 years, and it was always a little annoying that you could not use POP.
But here is what’s interesting… I went looking for the content setting and could not find it. But I did find the POP settings and enabled it and now I have POP access to my free yahoo.com email account! I did NOT have to change the content to Asia!
I know about 2 or 3 years ago I wanted to set it up with Thunderbird, but you had to upgrade to Premium account to get POP access, but now it seems my free account includes free pop access!
Go figure!?!