Psst! Access Yahoo! Mail in Outlook or Outlook Express (for free)

Those who use a POP3 email client, such as Outlook or Outlook Express are probably aware you can't access your Yahoo! Mail account unless you purchase the $20/year Yahoo! Mail Plus plan. Right? Wrong. Here's a free solution to get around this obstacle.

While there are additional benefits to paying for Yahoo! Mail Plus – such as no advertisements and a hearty 20MB limit for attachments – many people simply want to be able to access their Yahoo! email inside of a desktop email problem (opposed to going to the Yahoo! Mail website).

Problem is, you can't access your Yahoo! Mail in a POP3 program – unless you're using a nifty little program we stumbled upon called YPOPs!. This handy utility provides POP3 an SMTP access to Yahoo! Mail, for free, therefore you can use Outlook, Outlook Express and others, to download, read and reply to your Yahoo! Mail friends, family or coworkers.
 
Not only is this convenient as you need not visit the website to read email but you can also archive older messages (and/or read them offline) with this solution.

Here's how to get going in 3 easy steps:

1. Download and install the program. Now go to your email program (such as Outlook) and set up your Yahoo! email account, such as johnsmith@yahoo.com. Select POP3 as the "server type" and enter your Yahoo! login ID and password.

2. For both Incoming mail server and Outgoing mail server, enter 127.0.0.1. Then, click on More Settings and choose the Advanced tab to increase the Server Timeout value to Long.

3. Check off "My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication" and " Use same settings as my incoming mail server."

That's it!

You'll also see a little mail icon on your taskbar. Double-click this to launch the YPOPs! settings and you can configure options.

Oh, and if you're wondering, YPOPs! is not in violation with Yahoo! Mail's terms of service. Read this FAQ for more info.

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