Struggling to Add BT Email Account to MacBook

[ChrisNorwich]

Morning all,

I've set up a BT email address and it works fine as a webmail application, but I'd like to have the account in my OSX Mail app as well. 

I go to Mail / Add Account / Other mail account / type my email address and password but just get the spinning grey wheel for two minutes. Sometimes it asks me to add the incoming and outgoing servers so I use the settings recommended in this article:

https://btbusiness.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/18747/~/how-to-set-up-your-email-in-mac-mail

But I keep getting the error 'Unable to verify account name or password.' (I've intentionally left email address blank just for the screenshot.)

Are these setting correct? Thanks in advance.

Chris

[licquorice]

If you are a residential customer these are the settings https://www.bt.com/help/email/manage-email-account/manual-settings/what-are-the-settings-for-outgoin...

If you are a business customer you will need to ask on the business forum

[ChrisNorwich]

Thanks for the reply, but I've tried those settings as well. (Although on the IMAP Settings section of the article you linked there is no listing for outgoing mail server. But I've seen other articles recommend using mail.btinternet.com for both so that's what I've done.)

[licquorice]

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@ChrisNorwich wrote:

Although on the IMAP Settings section of the article you linked there is no listing for outgoing mail server.

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There won't be, IMAP is purely the incoming server, the outgoing server is SMTP, the settings for which are detailed in the page linked.

Outlook 365 does seem to be problematic with BT email for some reason.

Make sure you haven't selected secure password authentication in the SMTP settings.

[ChrisNorwich]

Thanks again for the reply. The two account type options OSX Mail gives you are IMAP and POP, so I'm not sure how I'd access the SMTP settings. Would you advise me to leave Outgoing Mail Server blank for IMAP, or would that not make a difference?

[licquorice]

Sorry, I have no knowledge of Mac devices and their completely weird and non standard ways. However, IMAP and POP3 are incoming mail protocols and SMTP is an outgoing mail protocol. Incoming and outgoing are completely independent configurations. Outgoing server configuration for IMAP is a complete oxymoron but if that is how it is presented in the setup then the server needs to be mail.btinternet.com with port 465 and plain authentication.

[ChrisNorwich]

No problem; I can relate to Macs being weird! Thanks for your help.

[licquorice]

There should be an advanced settings option somewhere to set the SMTP parameters

[licquorice]

Try this to make sure settings are correct.

1. Select Tools > Accounts.

2. Select the email account you want to change.

3. Update your account description, personal information, username and password, or other settings, depending on the type of account you're editing.

4. When finished with your updates, select OK.

[ChrisNorwich]

When you say 'Tools > Accounts,' what app are you in? (There's no Tools menu in Mail.) Do you mean on My BT somewhere?)

I did try to find some advanced settings in System Preferences somewhere but couldn't. There's only the 'Internet Accounts' section, and I couldn't find anything there.