Add Yahoo email account to Windows Live Mail

Since Yahoo Mail is supported by ads, it makes no money when you check your Yahoo messages from an email program like Windows Live Mail. Surprisingly, and unlike other webmail providers, however, Yahoo prevents you from hooking up your account to any email client unless you subscribe to Yahoo Mail Plus (now called "Yahoo Premium Mail Ad Free"). In Windows Live Mail 2012, a Yahoo Mail account setup is just about fully automated. Enter your username, password, and display name and you are ready to go! So, try it anyway: you might unknowingly have the Premium service, or Yahoo may silently change its policy.

Note: see our "Create Yahoo Email Account" tutorial if you don't yet own an "@yahoo.com" email address. Sign-up is free, and takes mere seconds! (Yahoo recently spent a lot of time and effort modernizing the Yahoo Mail experience, an already stellar webmail service to being with.)

Email account settings for Yahoo Mail (Manual Setup)

It's possible to manually setup your Yahoo email account manually in Windows Live Mail, using the "server settings": but, Yahoo being so popular, it's often one of the choices that can be automatically added to your email application. Just add the email address and password, and you're done! Generally, IMAP will be picked by default, but this is up to the email program. For more info, please see our "Yahoo Mail Server Settings" tutorial (separate website).

Your account settings for outgoing mail (SMTP) control the emails you send through Yahoo's servers: they're the same whether you connect with POP / POP3 or IMAP:

Setup Yahoo email address in Windows Live Mail

If this isn't the first time you launch Windows Live Mail (the "Add email account" dialog automatically opens in that case), manually add a new account by going to the Accounts tab in the Ribbon, and clicking on the "New email account" button:

Tip: it's also possible to setup new email addresses by going to File (top left corner), selecting Options, and clicking "Accounts" in the right column:  When the Accounts window opens, click on the "Add" button.

Type your full Yahoo email address in the first field, and your account password in the second (it is case-sensitive!) If you keep the "Remember this password" checkbox checked, Windows Live Mail won't have to ask for your password whenever it sends or receives your messages from the server (lock your computer when you step away). Finally, enter your first and/or last name as you'd like them to appear when you send emails from Windows Live Mail using your Yahoo account (doesn't necessarily have to match the name in your Yahoo account, but it might confuse your recipients otherwise!)

Optionally make Yahoo Mail the default account

The default account in Windows Live Mail determines which email address will be used by default, for example when you click an email link on a web page: this of course only applies if you have setup multiple email addresses in the program. To use your Yahoo email address as the default sender, check the "Make this my default email account" checkbox (note that you can change the default account at any time).

Now click on the Next button: Windows Live Mail will connect to Yahoo and check your credentials: if the authentication succeeds, you will get a "Your email account was added" confirmation message. Click on the Finish button to finish the setup.

Rename your account

By default, Windows Live Mail will add to the left pane (folder listing) an entry labeled "Yahoo (username@yahoo.com)". If you want to give the account you added a different name, right-click on it and choose "Properties". Type a new name, and click OK:

Caveat: make sure you understand the “Leave messages on server” option.

Sending your first email

Press the Ctrl+N keyboard shortcut (or click on the Email message button) to compose a new message: your Yahoo email address will now be listed, and possibly even have been automatically selected) in the "From" sender dropdown menu: