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Apple Devices Email

Web Based Emails on macOS (older devices)

My Apple computer has served me well for years and I am not ready to upgrade just yet. Can I set up my email account on my older Apple computer?

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Overview

Apple Mail, also known as macMail, is the built-in email program that comes with your macOS computer. This walk through will show you how to configure older versions of Apple Mail to work with your new email address.

Apple updates

Sometimes, after an update on your iOS or macOS device, your emails will suddenly stop working. These updates sometimes occur in the background without any user input.

You can find more information on this here.

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Before you start

If you haven’t already, you will want to create an email address with your email hosting account. You can find information on that process here.

You will first need to ensure you have the correct password for the account. You can test this by trying to log into your webmail.

If you do not know your hosting service password, you can log into your hosting service and update it there.

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Adding an Account

  1. Open Apple Mail (Mail in your Applications or from the Dock)
  2. Click on the Mail menu in the upper left (to the right of the Apple logo)
  3. Click on Add Account
  4. Click on “Other Mail Account…”
  5. Click on “Mail account”
  6. Fill in the requested information:
    • Name – this will be the name shown on your sent emails
    • Email – your new email address.
    • Password – your email password you created
  7. It’s possible that you will see an error at this step – Mail can’t verify the identity of autodiscover.example.com. That’s fine; you can go ahead and click Connect. If you see another error for the domain, click Connect again.
  8. Now, we’ll fill in your incoming mail settings:
    • Email Address – should have your email address prefilled
    • Username – should be your full email address
    • Password – should be showing all dots. If not, enter your email password
    • Account Type – IMAP (keep messages synced to the server) or POP (download messages locally). See here for more information on POP vs IMAP.
    • Incoming Mail Server – mail.example.com (replace example.com with your domain)
    • Outgoing Mail Server – mail.example.com (replace example.com with your domain)
  9. Click Sign In
  10. You may see another error here – Mail can’t verify the identity of mail.example.com. Again, that’s fine. Click Connect
  11. Be sure that Mail is checked (Notes is optional) and click Done

Congratulations! You’ve just created your email account. Try sending yourself a test message to make sure it’s working.

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Updating an Existing Account

If you have trouble sending email, or you are plagued with popups saying that Mail can’t verify the identity of mail.example.com, you may need to adjust your outgoing email settings.

  1. Open Apple Mail.
  2. Click on the
  3. From the Mail menu, choose Preferences.
  4. Click on Accounts from the top menu.
  5. Select your email account from the list on the left.

Incoming Mail Server (POP or IMAP)

In the Account Information tab –

  • Incoming Mail Server – mail.example.com, with your own domain name replacing example.com.
  • User Name – your full email address
  • Password – your email password

In the Advanced tab –

  • Server Port – 993 for IMAP, 995 for POP
  • Use SSL – must be checked
  • Authentication – must be set to Password.

Outgoing Mail Server

To access the outgoing settings, you first need to –

  1. Navigate to the Account Information tab.
  2. Click on the up-down arrow icon to the right of Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP)
  3. Click on Edit SMTP server list

You should now see a list of all your SMTP servers at the top of this window and the settings at the bottom.

In the Account Information tab –

  • Description – not server related, whatever you like
  • Server Name – mail.example.com, with your own domain name replacing example.com
  • TLS Certificate – none

In the Advanced tab –

  • Automatically detect and maintain account settings – this should be unchecked
  • Port – 465
  • Use SSL – checked
  • Authentication – Password
  • Allow insecure authentication – uncheck
  • User Name – your full email address
  • Password – your email password
  • Note – it may state that the user name and password are optional, this is not correct, they need to be entered

You’re all set! All of your settings should now be up to date.

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Still not working!!!

There are a few tricks to try if the account settings are still not working.

  • Ensure that there are no emails stuck in your outbox and then restart the device. Sometimes mail stuck in the mailbox with stop the settings from getting updated
  • If the verification process seems to be taking a long time, then it has most likely failed. You may want to close the settings and try again.
  • If you are on a cellular device, sometimes you cannot update and test the settings while talking on the device. You may want to try again once done with your call.
  • The final option is to remove the email address from the device and add it again. While there are no issues doing this with an IMAP account, there is a possibility of losing mail in a POP account that was on the device and not on the server. You will want to make sure that there is not any important mail on the device that are not in your webmail before removing the account. This lost mail would not be recoverable.

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If you have any further questions, please be sure to reach out to our support staff by using our chat service in your client area or by submitting a ticket.