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Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
#25726 04/14/13 08:18 PM
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No. There, no one has to answer.

Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
slolerner #25728 04/14/13 10:08 PM
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Originally Posted By: slolerner
No. There, no one has to answer.

Originally Posted By: Apple
You can simultaneously set up Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and other apps to use accounts you have with web service providers such as iCloud, Google, Yahoo!, AOL, and Facebook. You enter account information in one place—the Mail, Contacts & Calendars pane of System Preferences—and thereby set up multiple apps.

Given the choice I would choose Apple's answer over yours. If you are having trouble setting up an AOL account in Mail, perhaps if you would tell us what you are doing and how the process is failing, someone could help you.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
joemikeb #25729 04/14/13 10:21 PM
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Just to be certain that you and slolerner are on the same track, to which version of OS X does your quote pertain?


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
artie505 #25730 04/14/13 11:52 PM
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It's the same MacBook Air we were dealing with before. I hate AOL and never deal with it. I thought the only way to get your AOL mail is by signing into AOL online. Can you import AOL mail to MacMail as POP? What are the settings? mail.aol.com and smtp.aol.com?

Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
slolerner #25731 04/15/13 12:05 AM
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To be more specific, I'm transitioning her from AOL to her own existing domain-specific address. Both are active. I did something similar before directing an AOL account to Google and switching the "Reply To" to a private Domain address until there were just a few stragglers who had the AOL address in their address books and then sent out a "closing acct, change your address book" notice after about two months. I thought if I could send her AOL mail directly into MacMail along with her existing private Domain address mail I could do the redirect in MacMail to cut off reply strings that hold onto the AOL adress and she could get her existing domain mail there too and do the transition without Google. Does anyone understand what I'm talking about? The last transition I did the place wanted to use Google as the final destination so all the mail could be online and everyone could pick it up from anywhere, this will be private and only picked up from the MBA.

Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
slolerner #25733 04/15/13 08:35 PM
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What you are saying makes sense and seems like a good way to go about the transition.

But you never answered the first question above. More generally, did you try to set up Apple Mail to retrieve AOL mail by going through the "new account" set up in Mail Preferences? What happened?


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Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
Ira L #25734 04/15/13 11:24 PM
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I have NEVER set up MacMail to pick up AOL, just thought it couldn't be done. Everyone I know who uses AOL uses it as webmail. If it can be done, then i need to know how to do it before I get there to do it for her. What are the settings POP settings for AOL? Just the usual mail server settings? Password Security Only?

Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
artie505 #25735 04/16/13 01:09 AM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
Just to be certain that you and slolerner are on the same track, to which version of OS X does your quote pertain?
OS X 10.8, 10.7, 10.6, 10.5 and I am not sure of previous versions but as far as I can tell all the way back to OS X 10.1 or 10.2.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
slolerner #25736 04/16/13 01:12 AM
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If you are using Mail in OS X 10.7 or 10.8 simply go to Mail > Preferences > Accounts then click on the plus button at the bottom of the list of accounts and enter the AOL user id and password. Mail will figure out the rest of the settings from there.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
joemikeb #25739 04/16/13 02:27 AM
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Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Originally Posted By: artie505
Just to be certain that you and slolerner are on the same track, to which version of OS X does your quote pertain?
OS X 10.8, 10.7, 10.6, 10.5 and I am not sure of previous versions but as far as I can tell all the way back to OS X 10.1 or 10.2.

Originally Posted By: Apple
You enter account information in one place—the Mail, Contacts & Calendars pane of System Preferences—and thereby set up multiple apps. (Emphasis added)

Hmmm... I'm running OS X 10.5.8 and 10.6.8 installations at the moment, and that pref pane doesn't appear in either, nor did I see it in OS X 10.3.

Last edited by artie505; 04/16/13 02:31 AM. Reason: Correct OS X versions

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
slolerner #25741 04/16/13 05:55 AM
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I've been using an AOL email address since 1992; while I've been trying in recent years to move everything to a private domain email address, I have so many contacts who still use my AOL address I can't get rid of it.

Every version of Mail.app going all the way back to the beginning has worked fine with AOL, using POP or IMAP. (One thing to be aware of: If you use IMAP, AOL will delete email from the server after about 20 days. I use a Rule in Mail that says "if any part of the To: address includes aol.com, move the message to a folder called Saved Mail on my local hard drive.)

The server settings are:

Incoming mail server: imap.aol.com
Username: Your AOL username (without the @aol.com part)
Password: Your AOL password
Outgoing mail server: smtp.aim.com
Use custom port: 587
Authentication: password
Username: Your AOL username (without the @aol.com part)
Password: Your AOL password
Turn on the "Use only this server" checkbox


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Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
artie505 #25745 04/16/13 02:28 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505

Originally Posted By: Apple
You enter account information in one place—the Mail, Contacts & Calendars pane of System Preferences—and thereby set up multiple apps. (Emphasis added)

Hmmm... I'm running OS X 10.5.8 and 10.6.8 installations at the moment, and that pref pane doesn't appear in either, nor did I see it in OS X 10.3.

Certainly that works with OS X 10.7. and 10.8. In System Preferences > Mail, Contacts, and Calendars (the icon is a blue circle with an @ symbol in it) you find essentially the same dialog found in Mail > Preferences > Accounts but with the option to select GMail, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Aol., vimeo, flickr, or "add other account. The dialog in Mail > Preferences is even simpler and determines most email account settings from the email address itself without the need to select a particular provider.

Artie you are two to three or more years behind the power curve, in other words ancient history tongue grin


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
joemikeb #25747 04/16/13 02:42 PM
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You're right about me being behind, of course, but you missed my point, which was that you used a quote that mentioned a pref pane that did not exist prior to Lion to document pre-Lion functionality.

I wasn't questioning your facts, but whether they necessarily applied to slolerner's issue.

(Actually, it's not even two years since Lion's release...July 2011, and if all I'm missing is easier access to social networking sites I'm not behind at all.)


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
artie505 #25749 04/16/13 04:57 PM
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Tacit, you can transition from AOL using the Google method I described above, where you redirect the 'reply to' to your other email address. That redirects existing strings. If you don't want to pick up your mail from Google, you can forward your own address from Google to your MacMail. You don't give out the Google address and don't use it, just use the account to redirect mail. It gets most people to the new address, then email the stragglers to change their address book. If your AOL address bounces after you close the account, most people will go to your website for the new address, right?


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Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
slolerner #25750 04/16/13 10:27 PM
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BTW, MBA is 10.6.8

Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
slolerner #25751 04/16/13 10:34 PM
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Oh, changing the 'reply to' also introduces the new address to the recently used adress self-complete function when people are starting a new email string. (If the two addresses have the same name in them.)

Last edited by slolerner; 04/16/13 10:36 PM. Reason: accuracy
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
slolerner #25769 04/18/13 09:24 PM
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She has an iphone and the MBA. Does she need to use IMAP? And can you switch the 'reply to' in the MacMail AOL account to divert AOL strings to her domain email address?

Last edited by slolerner; 04/18/13 09:27 PM. Reason: more
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
slolerner #25770 04/19/13 12:22 AM
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IMAP is not a requirement, but it is a real benefit in the specific case where messages are being accessed from more than one device. With a POP account, if your wife's iPhone accesses a message first it will never appear on her MBA and vice versa. This is a royal pain in the nether regions of the anatomy.

If the email provider does not support IMAP my recommended workaround is to get a Google email account — which does support IMAP. Then the Google account can be setup to pull in messages from the POP account — or accounts for that matter. You access the Google account using Mail on the iPhone and MBA but you see the messages from the POP account(s) as if it were an IMAP account. You can even setup the Google account so that if you reply to a message received from the POP account through the Google account it will appear to the recipient as if it came through the POP account.

I hope that is clear. It took me a while to wrap my head around all that, but I have used it for several years now and it works fine. My only complaint is Google's IMAP is a bit different from other IMAP servers in the way it handles subordinate mailboxes.

Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
joemikeb #25771 04/19/13 12:34 AM
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> With a POP account, if your wife's iPhone accesses a message first it will never appear on her MBA and vice versa.

I just launched Mail on my 2nd deuced Mac(hina) and it d/l'ed a message I had already d/l'ed to my main machine, and this is standard behavior for me.

Does my setup somehow differ from what you've described?

Edit: I use Verizon as my mail server for a POP account, and Mail is set to never remove messages from my server.

Last edited by artie505; 04/19/13 09:44 AM. Reason: Clarify and delete silly question

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
artie505 #25772 04/19/13 06:56 AM
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Sounds like it has to be tested on the spot. I have neither an AOL account or an iPhone. Rats. BTW, I am a female, she is a different kind of relative, not that there is anything wrong with that. grin


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Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
artie505 #25774 04/19/13 11:56 PM
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Artie, as you have demonstrated your method will work. I started to mention it before, but decided not to complicate the issue. It will work, but it does create additional work because all messages have to be separately "managed" on every device you are using. With IMAP managing the messages on any one device performs the same operation on all devices accessing the IMAP account.

Many years ago, before IMAP became ubiquitous, and before I had so many different email capable devices, I used to do the same thing but with at least four and often five different active email accounts, managing the content on my various computers was taking way too much time. Add in iPhone and iPad and it was really annoying. Admittedly I resisted IMAP for a good while because it was not what I was used to, but .mac finally won me over to IMAP and now I would not go back to POP unless it were the only possible option.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
slolerner #25775 04/20/13 12:00 AM
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Originally Posted By: slolerner
BTW, I am a female, she is a different kind of relative, not that there is anything wrong with that.

blush Once again we have proof of the old adage about what happens when you AssUMe. blush


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
joemikeb #25776 04/20/13 12:26 AM
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Thanks for the clarification; your point about multiple, soon to be multitudinous, devices is well taken.

This only came up because I happen to have two deuced Mac(hina)s for the moment, but only for the moment, so POP is just fine for my needs; I have, however, noted IMAP's syncing capabilities against possible future need.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
artie505 #25778 04/20/13 05:05 PM
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Just thought of this: If she changes the account sent out from each time she receives in an AOL mail, that will redirect the reply to. She can use the drop-down box upper left in the compose window to switch accounts, huh?

Re: Can MacMail retrieve AOL mail?
slolerner #25779 04/20/13 07:47 PM
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In a word — yes that will work. (Okay I am too talky.)

However, from experience, if she is wanting to wean her friends away from emailing her using the AOL account simply changing the Reply-To address is unlikely to change their behavior or address books. Too few of her recipients will even notice the change.

The best strategy I have found, if the account supports an auto-reply, is to setup the auto-reply to say something like…
Originally Posted By: auto-reply
This email address is deprecated and will be turned off on December 31, 2013. Juliet Jone's preferred email address is jjones (at) icloud.com. Please note the change in your address book.

Then about September she can add this as a signature on replies to messages she receives on the AOL account.

If AOL does not support an auto-reply, sometimes called vacation mail, feature, she can create a rule in Apple Mail that will automatically reply to messages received on the AOL account. With all that it is almost guaranteed there will be the few who "do not get the message", "ignore the message", or blithely go on about their way and wonder why they lost contact.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
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