Most email accounts can be configured automatically in apps like Apple Mail. Occasionally you will need to know how to use manual email server settings.
This might be due to a miscommunication between the application and the email servers. If an app is out of date, that can also cause this.
If logging in with the corresponding email option doesn’t work, users may need to use the “other” section of most mailing apps.
Access and Navigation
Before entering the server settings and attempting to login, it is very important to be 100% sure that the password is correct. To do this, log into the email account in a browser. Once you are sure, proceed below.
This post uses Apple Mail to explain the process. In other third party apps, such as Android’s Email app, it will be a similar process.
The first step will be to navigate to the account section of the applications settings.
If the account is already logged in on the device but is not working it may need to be removed before trying this.
On an iPhone, the user must enter settings, then mail, then click on the “accounts” tab.
Once in the accounts section if the corresponding email provider option isn’t allowing login, press “Other.”
In this example, Yahoo was not allowing us to login properly, so manual server settings were required using Other.
This can happen if the app is out of date, a server error occurs, or a multitude of other issues.
Understanding The Server Settings
Once Other has been selected the user will be asked for personal, then server information.
For this first box the user must type their name, email address, and password, and a description of the account.
When complete it will look something like the image on the right below.
After this information is typed in hit next. It will then ask for server settings.
Use the respective company’s website as the source for the server settings.
This can typically be found from a google search. For this example, we will use Yahoo server settings.
The link above was the very first result of a google search for “Yahoo Mail server settings.” We confirmed that the source of the information was Yahoo or another trusted source.
On the phone, the user must type the corresponding information into the correct spots.
For incoming server in this example, the user would type “imap.mail.yahoo.com.
Username in all sections would be the user’s email address.
Password will be the user’s email password, which was already confirmed during the prior step. Keep in mind if this doesn’t work with the account’s normal password, an app specific password may be required. Check out our blog post on how to use an app specific password.
For incoming server in this example, the user would type smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Outgoing username and password are optional, but it will not hurt to type them in anyway. If filled in, it must contain the same user name and password used above.
Depending on the email provider and app being used, one may need to type the port as well. This situation did not call for it.
IMAP/POP3 Differences
In this example we used IMAP settings.
IMAP stores the messages on a server and then synchronizes them with whatever device the account is logged into. The user is viewing the emails that are stored on the provider’s server. If you delete on one device, you have deleted on the server and it will be deleted from all devices.
IMAP is generally used because it better coordinates email across multiple devices.
POP3 treats each device separately. Emails are downloaded onto individual devices and there are various settings for determining how emails on the server will be treated. It is not necessarily true that every device will see every email, or that deleting an email on one device will delete it on other devices. POP3 was once the default choice before people started to use multiple devices.
If you have any questions about manual email server settings or our terminology wasn’t clear, please use our contact form to send us a message. Thanks!