Sky to Yahoo mix up

[Amy B]

Hi Everyone,

I'm pulling my hair out here, been to and fro with sky, and they just seem to be causing one almighty cock up, to put it finely!

My email address was originally set up with tinyworld, who was then taken over by tiscali and then by talk talk. Our internet provider is sky, and are moving their mail servers over to yahoo. For some reason, all of our tinyworld email addresses stopped being able send any emails. on Sky's advice, we tried to change some of our mail settings. For some reason, my mac didn't seem to like this and stopped even receiving emails! Thankfully I could get them on my phone.

This has been going on for about 2 weeks now, and someone from sky finally called to sort things out with me.

He told me to go to Go >Utilities > Key Chain Access and delete anything from POP or IMAP.

This didn't work so he told me to go to Mail > Preferences > Accounts and take off using the minus button at the bottom and then re-add it by clicking the plus.
Now, I hadn't thought about it at the time, but he told me to add the account as an IMAP, but when I checked on my iphone, the account is a POP3 one.

This failed to work either. However, all 2000 of my highly important emails, both sent and received have gone, never been received again. The man from sky told me to log on to talk talk mail online because my emails would be there. But no, only emails dating back to the 30th March still exist on their server.

This man from sky has no idea what to do, and will, fingers crossed, phone back tomorrow.

As a last resort, I phoned Apple care to see if there was anything they could do about retrieving my emails. I had the most wonderfully helpful lady who was very sympathetic and tried everything she could, but in the end could not do anything. She told me that the man from sky should have pre-warned me that my emails would go and should therefore back them up.

I'm now at my wits end as i've lost university work, receipts, festival tickets etc, and have no idea what to do. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks, Amy

 

[neil_g]

you could try quitting mail, disconnect the internet and reopen mail. long shot but the local offline copy might not have updated..

in future though, backup important mail. youll probably find in the small print that most ISP dont guarantee emails from data loss.

 

[Mithrail]

Hi Amy

There are some separate issues here.

First. The reason you were suddenly unable to send email is because of the Sky move to Yahoo. Your email provider is Talk Talk so you receive email from them, but because Sky is your internet provider, you have to use Sky to send email. Thus, when Sky switched to Yahoo, you would need to make changes to your outgoing (SMTP) email settings to continue to be able to send email.

Second. There are two primary ways of accessing email on a computer/phone. The first is POP, and the second is IMAP. Using POP you essentially download all of your email from the Talk Talk server onto your local device. Thus, when you deleted your account on the laptop it sounds as though you deleted all your locally stored emails. When you logged on to the Talk Talk webmail service, you saw those emails which had not yet been downloaded.

Someone else, I am sure, will be able to tell you exactly how to reconfigure your email on a Mac, but essentially your email account needs to be set up to receive email from Talk Talk, and to send email via Sky/Yahoo.

 

[neil_g]

you would need to make changes to your outgoing (SMTP) email settings to continue to be able to send email.

you might be able to retain the talktalk smtp if they use authentication. sky dont block other smtp access so that should work.

 

[frank]

I lost the use of my sky email address, they lost all mine completely. Set me up on yaboo but didn't tranfer the the account or whatever they were supposed to do.
I thought I'll try sending mail straight from yahoos webmail, after all they have set it up, still didn't work. Setup a new account on yahoo via their webmail page but that wouldn't work, tried every common setting under the sun, followed instructions found on the net to the letter, still stuffed.
Techs just tell you to do this and do that when they haven't a clue how to sort it. In the end I just resurrected a old account my domain name and hosting company, it's probably more secure. I'd never rely on Sky or yahoo again for emails again. I think you can kiss all your stuff goodbye to be honest.

 

[J.D.]

Hi Amy

There are some separate issues here.

First. The reason you were suddenly unable to send email is because of the Sky move to Yahoo. Your email provider is Talk Talk so you receive email from them, but because Sky is your internet provider, you have to use Sky to send email. Thus, when Sky switched to Yahoo, you would need to make changes to your outgoing (SMTP) email settings to continue to be able to send email.

Second. There are two primary ways of accessing email on a computer/phone. The first is POP, and the second is IMAP. Using POP you essentially download all of your email from the Talk Talk server onto your local device. Thus, when you deleted your account on the laptop it sounds as though you deleted all your locally stored emails. When you logged on to the Talk Talk webmail service, you saw those emails which had not yet been downloaded.

Someone else, I am sure, will be able to tell you exactly how to reconfigure your email on a Mac, but essentially your email account needs to be set up to receive email from Talk Talk, and to send email via Sky/Yahoo.

This is wrong. I have Sky bb and use Sky, iCloud and Google apps (for my own domain) both to send and receive mail via IMAP

There's no reason why you can't configure accounts from providers other than sky to send and receive mail over a Sky bb connection

 

[onomatopoeia]

This is wrong. I have Sky bb and use Sky, iCloud and Google apps (for my own domain) both to send and receive mail via IMAP

You do not send email via IMAP.

 

[Mithrail]

You do not send email via IMAP.

Thank you onomatopoeia, you saved me the correction.

 

[J.D.]

You do not send email via IMAP.

Ok fair enough, mails sent by SMTP.

Have reread Mithrails post, It read like you had to use Sky's email account to send mail, which isn't the case.

There's no reason to change smtp settings for the talk talk account though - I'm using sky, iCloud and google apps and haven't had to make any smtp changes for iCloud or google since Sky's switchover-the settings for other providers will stay exactly the same

 

[Mithrail]

I must confess, I (wrongly) assumed that Sky blocked other SMTP access since so many other ISPs do.

The fact that Amy B is experiencing problems suggests that she might not have been using Talk Talk's SMTP settings.

Amy B, are you able to tell us what your email settings were before this all started? Can you also confirm if you have tried reconfiguring your email as per the tinyworld settings on this page http://help2.talktalk.co.uk/email/what-are-talktalks-email-settings#

 

[J.D.]

I must confess, I (wrongly) assumed that Sky blocked other SMTP access since so many other ISPs do.

The fact that Amy B is experiencing problems suggests that she might not have been using Talk Talk's SMTP settings.

Amy B, are you able to tell us what your email settings were before this all started? Can you also confirm if you have tried reconfiguring your email as per the tinyworld settings on this page http://help2.talktalk.co.uk/email/what-are-talktalks-email-settings#

Sounds like this could well be the case

If not already using talk talk SMTP settings this would be the first thing I'd try

 

[Amy B]

Hey guys, sorry for not getting back to here quicker, it's been a hectic weekend.

First of all, thanks for all your replies. I did check the settings Mithrail with the information you provided and they are all the same.

My parents are also on the same server (if that is what you call it) using tinyworld email addresses. My Mother's is completely fine, but my Father is unable to send, but can receive, and weirdly, I started being able to send emails last night, but yet able to receive.

I'm getting a call from sky tomorrow, and hopefully they will sort it. I don't want to fiddle with the settings too much myself because if anything does go wrong, sky will just pass all blame onto me, and as it is, I have enough at the moment to hold against them.

Hopefully this will get sorted soon as it's driving me mad! Apparently all these issues were caused by one technician imputing a code just slightly wrong

Thanks again