Webmail Works for Secondary Addresses, But Clients (Mac Mail & Thunderbird)

[GeneralDisquiet]

I've had a BT-Yahoo email address (name@btinternet.com) for years and it works just fine in OSX and on Mac Mail or Thunderbird clients.   I have been using disposable email addresses, again with no problems.

Given that BT are stopping disposable address use, I thought I would create some new secondary addresses.  Basically, I logged in to my main BT-Yahoo account via webmail and got asked to do all this linking to My BT and offering to set up new secondary addresses was part of the process.

Did all that and even got my wife to set up hers with a link to My BT as an Account Manager.  All worked fine on the surface.

Now, I can log into my primary account (BT-Yahoo) via webmail (My BT) or using a webclient.   My wife can do the same with hers.   The problem comes with the secondary addresses (all BT Mail and NOT BT-Yahoo).  I can log into each and every one of them (5) using webmail, but cannot set up any of them on the Mac Mail or Thunderbird clients.  

I assumed it was a slow updating mail server, but 24 hours laternothing has changed.

I had an internet exchange with the BT call centre in India yesterday who hadn't got a clue!  Any help gratefully received.

[gg30340]

The servers can be slow to catch up with new email accounts and 24 hours or even longer is not unusual.

While I suspect that you are already using the correct settings it is worth checking as per this link.

https://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/44917/kw/bt%20mail/c/6591

It is also best to set up the accounts manually on the email client rather than using the clients wizard.

[GeneralDisquiet]

I am trying to set things up manually of the Mail clent or on Thunderbird client.  It fails at the very first step - the server doesn't recognise the email address and the timer spins and spins.

[Andy_N]

Hi

This could be because of what gg30340 mentioned, in that the account isn't fully recognised yet. It seems like Mac mail is still trying to access the account to see if it can offer some relevant server details - even though manual setup has been chosen.

Perhaps try every couple of hours or so to see if it will suddenly work. If it doesn't work after a couple of days, pop back.

[New_To_UK · Accepted solution]

webmail and clients authenticate differently and if you find the password works on one and the same password does not work on client, a mismatch has happened at some point of resetting your password. The workaround is to reset your password a few times - that normally fixes it. I have previously logged this as a bug with the helpdesk.  

[GeneralDisquiet]

This turns out to be almost the right answer.   The new secondary accounts were only set up yesterday - so it wasn't an issue of there being a mismatch when passwords were reset - they cannot have been set up correctly in the first place.  Changing the password for the first time has resolved the issue for all the accounts.   Thanks for all the ideas.