BTinternet/BTopenworld/BTYahoo! email sending problems

SMTP Problems using BTYahoo! mail system - 22-Mar-2008, updated 10-Jan-2010

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(For FROM - this depends on your mail client.)

If you are having problems sending from a BTYahoo!/BTinternet mail address, then it may be due to configuration changes on the Yahoo! mail servers that requires verification of the FROM address if it is different to the actual btinternet email address of the account itself. Typically, the error shows as :-

Task 'mail.btinternet.com - Sending' reported error (0x800CCC0F) : 'The
connection to the server was interrupted. If this problem continues,
contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP). The
server responded: 553 From: address not verified; see
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/manage/sendfrom-07.html'

Note: This is not the same as smtp authentication! See my options 31 or 31a for details. These are now slightly out date due to this extra step.

Recent changes made to the Yahoo! mail servers (and hence to the servers used by BTinternet/BTYahoo!) has caused some problems for people. This also impacts on other Yahoo! partners, and the information in this page equally applies to them - but using their own ISP domain instead of @btinternet.com

The problem seems to manifest itself when the mail account has a different sending or FROM E-mail address to the actual btinternet email address of the account itself.

For your own existing @btinternet.com email addresses, this is a simple change to your email client just to make sure that the FROM email address is the same as the sending address (which may be without @btinternet.com).

As an example, in OE Mail account properties :-

General/E-Mail address : username@btinternet.com
Servers/Incoming Mail Server/Account name : username
Servers/Outgoing Mail Server/My server requires authentication "ticked" - press Settings. If "Log on using" is ticked, make sure that Account name is set as username

Another example for Thunderbird users :-

Tools/Account Settings... - pick mail account and look at the Account Settings
Email Address: (this is the FROM address) username@btinternet.com
Outgoing Server (SMTP) - you need to alter this to show the same account as the email address. If it does not appear in the list, it needs to be added as below. It may typically show "Use Default Server".
1. To add a sending account - on the left of the accounts list, go down to the entry Outgoing Server (SMTP), Click on it and then Click on Add
2. Discription (enter anything, it doesn't particularly matter in this case)
3. Server Name: - enter mail.btinternet.com
4. Make sure Use name and password in Security and Authentication is ticked.
5. In Username: - enter username, where "username" is the existing email account stub portion before @btinternet.com.
6. Tick No against Use secure connection and press OK
7. Go back to the Account Settings of the mail account in question and then alter the Outgoing Server (SMTP) setting to pick up this newly created entry.
8. An initial email send will probably request a password. This is the password for the mail account.


Clearly this impacts mostly when users have their own domains and have variable "Sending" addresses, but still use the BTinternet mail servers for sending.

Here are some instructions for those having problems sending mail on BTYahoo!/BTinternet accounts specifically with their own domain names.

Yahoo! requires you to set up and verify "new" FROM addresses via the webmail system. It can be a domain address, either the forwarding type, or one with its own smtp server.

Once verified you can use that address as the FROM address for your email, and if it is a domain address with its own SMTP server, you will be allowed to use that SMTP server to send mail.

The relevant Yahoo! instruction page is :-

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/manage/sendfrom-07.html

but it isn't particularly written with BTYahoo! accounts in mind, so here are the instructions for the BTYahoo! interface.

Let's assume you have a BTinternet/BTYahoo! mail account as follows username@btinternet.com, and you want to set it up to show the FROM field as MyOwnDomain@example.com (or another BTYahoo! account if you wish).

At the moment, doing this is giving you occasional or continual send errors.

0a - http://help.yahoo.com/bt/tutorials/cg/cg_ext_access1.html - this is the BT help pages mainly for webmail, it doesn't mention mail clients such as outlook express.
0b - http://help.yahoo.com/l/uk/bt/mail/yahoomail/manage/sendfrom-07.html - this is the BT help pages for verification, it doesn't mention mail clients such as outlook express, or what to do with them. However, what is worse is that it doesn't even mention to start in webmail! (Note: this has since been added)
0c - http://www.btyahoo.com/verify - this is the newest BT help pages for verification. The first paragraph is wrong, it will not fight spam.
Note: the above page did disappear, but is also available via http://btyahoo.com/verify

0d - Typically, you will verify against your primary email address initially. Hence the following assumes that you will login to your primary email address.

1 - Go to the BTYahoo! webmail page by your normal route (either via the BTYahoo! homepage, or direct via http://bt.yahoo.com/webmail or via http://mail.yahoo.com)

2a - Click on Options - Classic webmail interface
2b - Click Options/Mail Options - posh new beta webmail interface

3a - Click on Mail Accounts at the top of the right hand 'Management column - Classic webmail interface
3b - Click Accounts/Add or edit an account - posh new beta webmail interface, this will take you to the classic interface

4 - To add and configure and verify a new FROM address, click the ADD button or to verify an existing sending address highlight it and click on Edit

5 - Enter an Account name (doesn't matter what) for display purposes in the interface list and click Continue

6 - Enter the display name of the email address you want to appear in the FROM field, in the box Name - this will appear as a display name in the FROM field of email sent from the account within webmail. It doesn't matter what it is if using an email client such as Outlook Express.
Then enter the email address that you want to appear in the FROM field, in the box Email - this must be a genuine email address as you will be sent a verification email to that address with a clickable URL and a confirmation code in it. Click on Continue.
Note: An email address entered is converted to lower case. This is relevant for [12] below

7 - Set up Mail Server - this is Optional, and Skip this Step will be the button most will use. Typically, a user will already know the details to enter if relevant.

8 - Verify Account. BTYahoo! will now send a verification email to the FROM email address. Check the details are correct on this page and click on 'Send Verification'

9a - Check the email address described on the page for a verification email. Either click on the verification URL, or copy the confirmation code from the email into the confirmation code on your webmail page entitled Verify Account. If you get an error like :-

There was a error:
The confirmation code you entered does not match our records. Please try entering the code again.

then it looks like you will need to use a different/another sub account to continue. I've not been able to find an adequate explanation other than perhaps it's a maximum of 10 accounts. However, if you login to http://groups.yahoo.com/myprefs you will see the mail accounts associated with the account, some may even seem strange and not shown as in the sections 3a/3b above ....

At present, there appears to be no actual way to completely delete a verified email address. Although it looks like you can hit the "Delete" option within webmail Accounts, http://groups.yahoo.com/myprefs still shows the address.

9b - If you click on the URL in the verification email you will get a Verify Account page with the confirmation code already filled in.

In either case, now click on the Verify Account button.

10 - You will then probably get a password verification page 'Why am I being asked for my password?' - remember that this password is for the BT mail account that you are editing and NOT the FROM account you are having verified. If in doubt - check the email address displayed on the password page. Enter the password and click on 'Sign in' button.

11 - At this point you may get a

Unfortunately, there was a problem:
Unknown problem. We apologise for the inconvenience. Thank you.

(I did in Firefox, but not in IE7). The error message is an error! Just refresh the page using Ctrl-Reload (or possibly go through the Add phase again with the exact same details as far as the verification entry), and you should now get a Mail Accounts page which lists the approved accounts you can send from, and has across the top, the message :-

You can now send email from MyOwnDomain@example.com using the "From" pulldown on the Compose page within webmail

12 - At this point you can 'Sign Out' of the mail interface, or you may like to add others if required - and then go to your ordinary pop3/smtp email client and set it up the way you want, with the new address in the FROM field. You need to make sure that the mail client is set to use the correct BTinternet email account as the smtp authentication account your new FROM address is within.

Unfortunately, the FROM address looks to be only checked against a lower case entry in webmail, so you have to use johnsmith@example.com rather than JohnSmith@example.com in your mail client.

See my options 31 or 31a for smtp authentication details for various mail clients.

You should also be able to put the new address and its smtp server details as the smtp server for that account (as long as it does actually have the facility to send from an smtp server. If it is a BTYahoo! address then the smtp server would be 'mail.btinternet.com' and the username would be the bit before the @btinternet.com, and password would be the one for that email address.

13 - For each domain email account you send FROM, you will need to follow these same steps.

14 - Still getting 553 errors from "Ghost" emails ?. This may be due to stuck read receipts. See http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/deletereadreceipt.htm for a possible cure.

14a - If you are using Outlook 2003, and have SP1 you will need to update to SP2 or higher. See http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E25B7049-3E13-433B-B9D2-5E3C1132F206&displaylang=en for the update.

15 - If you receive 553 error messages, interrogation of the email content is needed. You should get two emails, one for the verification email address and the other for the account trying to send.
15a - The email received to the verification @btinternet.com address is pretty much useless, it doesn't contain anything of value like the email address attempting to verify against it. So someone trying to verify against a @btinternet.com address that isn't theirs, can get emails sent to a poor unfortunate recipient. This is not very clever. BT have actually done nothing about this despite repeatedly being informed.
15b - The email received to the email address attempting to be verified, contains text showing the email address to be verified against.
15c - There is nothing that can be done if the only email being received is the one in 15a.



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