Nightmare adding email account to Apple devices

[Gorsoft]

My @btinternet.com email address has been working fine on my 4 Apple devices for years until a few days ago when I had a need to chnage the password.  Innumerable attempts and wasted hours followed as I tried without success to get the device mail accounts working and in sync.

So a fresh start was needed.  A new email password created on my Apple Mac for my BT premium email account, identical to my MyBT ID and password.  It is working fine on My BT and I can read and send webmail and receive them OK on my Apple Mac.

Ok, onto the next device, my IPhone9.  I follow the standard method entering my BT mail account settings:

Select Other/Add Mail Account/enter Name - Email - Password - Description/press Next

I get a message "Cannot Connect Using SSL.  Do you want to try setting up the account without SSL?" Yes/No?

If I select No, it takes me back to a more detailed view of server details for IMPA/POP (I'm using IMAP) - everything looks OK.

If I select Yes, the long "Verifying" attempt fails with the message 'The SMTP server 'mail.btinternet.com' is not respsonding. Check you network connection and that you entered the  correct information in the 'Outgoing Mail Server' field.'

On the IPhone screen the details shown for Incoming and Outgoing Mail Servers are identical:

Host name: mail.btinternet.com

Username: (my email address)

Password: (my working password). (NB If I remove it, the entry says 'Optional'.

I am at my wits end on this.  I am reluctant to try adding BT Mail account to my IPADS until I can get it working on my IPhone.

Can anyone help?

[gg30340 · Accepted solution]

Did you delete the email account on your phone and then restart the phone. If not do that first so that it clears out any cache that may be storing the old password.

When you change your BT password on an iPhone/iPad/Apple device it may only change for INCOMING mail.

The following may be what you are already doing but it is worth re-checking. 

To change the outgoing mail password you have to go into Settings; then scroll down to Mail, Contacts, Calendars. From there select the BT email account and select the account where it is listed under IMAP.

You will find the details for the account and can change the password for the Incoming server there, the outgoing mail server only shows SMTP and mail.btinternet.com You have to tap on that Primary Server in order to find where the Outgoing password is hidden so you can update it.

When setting up the email account on your device you are best to set it up manually, using "other" and ensure that you are using the correct settings as per this link.

https://www.bt.com/help/email/manage-email-account/manual-settings/what-are-the-settings-for-outgoin...

Before setting up the email account on the phone, make sure that the other devices that have your email account on them are switch off so that they are not trying to poll for new email.

Guide to setting up email on iPhone. (This may be an older version so your settings may be slightly different but the principal is the same)

Go to your iPhone home screen and tap Settings.

Scroll down to Passwords & Accounts>Accounts>Add Account.

Tap Add Account.

Scroll down and tap Other.

Tap Add Mail Account.

Put the name you want people to see when they get mail from you in the Name field.

Enter your username in the Address field. For example, firstname.lastname@btinternet.com

Enter your password in the Password field.

In the Description field enter the name you want to use to identify the account.

Tap Next. If you get an error message at this point, tap OK.

Make sure that IMAP is selected at the top of the screen.

In the Incoming Mail Server section, change the Host Name to mail.btinternet.com

Now enter 993 in the Server port and set SSL to on.

Then scroll down to the Outgoing Mail Server section and change the Host Name to mail.btinternet.com

Now enter 465 in the Server port and set SSL to on.

Make sure the correct username and password are entered.

Tap Save.

Your settings will now be verified and you'll then see your Account screen. If this doesn’t happen automatically tap your account to access your email

[Gorsoft]

Thanks for your speedy response.  As you said, I had tried most of what you described, except the part about restarting the phone after deleting the faulty email account.   I tried that but it didn’t appear to work until I overwrote the default email password.  What was different in the ‘verifying’ process is that I got 4 green ticks against the account entries.  And at that point I knew it was going to work.  Success!  And following the same process on my other Apple devices, all was good. So thank you.

[Eddw]

Hello,  I am suffering a similar issue. My BT email account was having sync problems with my iphone (12 mini - iOS 16.3.1) and so I deleted the account from my iphone and now I can't get the phone to recognise that my BT account is an IMAP account and not a POP one. 

Like Gorsoft, I followed the standard method of entering my BT mail account settings:

Select Other/Add Mail Account/enter Name - Email - Password - Description/press Next.

But then I never get the chance to select IMAP or POP on the next screen -  Apple seems always to assume that my BT mail account is POP.  This is odd as if I look up my account in the Apple Mail settings finder it correctly identifies it as IMAP with all the correct server/port settings.

I have deleted the account and restarted the phone but this hasn't helped. The phone shows "POP ACCOUNT INFORMATION" when I look at it in Settings->Mail->Accounts.

All help appreciated. Many thanks

[gg30340]

See if the following links helps.

Add an email account to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch – Apple Support (UK)

The BT settings are in this link

BT Email server settings | BT Help

[Eddw]

Thanks for your quick response and the link.

The problem is that when I get to step 4 of the "How to set up your email account manually" section of Add an email account to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch – Apple Support (UK) the mail app automatically recognises my BT account as POP and so I never see the option to force an IMAP account in the next "Enter account settings manually" section and then insert the server settings.

 

[licquorice]

A mail app can't 'recognise' an account as POP or IMAP, it is the configuration of the app that determines the use of POP or IMAP, it is an Apple problem, not a BT problem.

[Eddw]

Thanks - will contact Apple.  Its strange as when I check my email address at https://support.apple.com/en-gb/mail Apple recognises it as IMAP

[licquorice]

This forum is full of posts with folks having problems with email on Apple devices. I'm sure Apple will tell you it's a BT problem.

Try a different mail app, Blue Mail is very good

[Gorsoft]

@Eddw
I had that problem too (defaulting to POP account). FWIW I only got the IMAP screen to appear after multiple attempts of cancelling and trying again. It wasn't the end of the story for me, but it IS a necessary to have that screen appear.