We recently switched over to AT&T’s U-verse for our internet, phone, and cable needs. For the most part, it’s been wonderful.
With their recorder you can record four television shows at a time and watch them from any TV set in the house. Their recorder is very Tivo like. I miss the little boop-boop-boop noises from my defunct Tivo, but aside from that, it’s been a good move. The internet speeds rival my old cable speeds, but now I don’t have to share the network with my neighbors and experience the 3:00 p.m. internet slow down.
The problem
The only really irritating problem I had was setting up my email. No one explained to me that I’d have to do something special with my AT&T account to get my personal domain (lenashore.com) to work. And, when it failed, it was giving me cryptic messages. I finally figured out the solution and wanted to post it here for anyone who needs it. Even though I now hold the answer, navigating through AT&T’s bastard yahoo page is still a challenge.
The Answer
Turns out that’s because AT&T controls what goes in and out of my computer whenever they want control of it. I understand why. If they let us all do anything we wanted, it could cause serious security issues.
So, what we need to do is to add any personal email addresses to our AT&T account, so that AT&T knows that it is really us.
- Login to att.net with your AT&T information.
- Go to the “mail” section (for me that is in the upper right quadrant of the screen)
- Go to “Options –> Mail Options” (or More Options..). It’s on the right hand side up close to the top.
- Select ”Accounts” on the left side of your screen.
- Select “Add or edit an account. From here you can add your personal domain email address. If you want to check your personal email from yahoo’s/AT&Ts mail interface online, you will get options to enter your account information… or you can skip it.
- You will get a message telling you that you will need to verify your account by responding to a message that has been sent to this newly added email address. After that, you should be set!
The Trend
It seems to be a trend to add this kind of requirement with our ISP providers. Comcast has recently systematically been requiring their login and password information attached to their SMTP. When I had Comcast, it worked for years without this authentication. One day it didn’t. They claimed it had always been required. So, I changed it and it worked fine again.
I have had the same thing happen with my friends who have Bellsouth. I assume it is because AT&T purchased Bellsouth and they are switching things over to a new system over a period of time.
So, if your email suddenly stops working, it probably has a simple fix that is only a minor inconvenience. Fortunately, it should be easy to fix and it will only have to be done once
…until the next time their systems change. 
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Where do I begin. My husband and I switched from AT&T DSL to AT&T u-VERSE back in Mar 2011. I was able to use my regular email address up until June 13th when I went to log into my account and it did not recognize my login or password. Then a window popped up that said my email account had been suspended.
I tried logging into my secondary email account as well as my husbands and the same results popped up. We spent 2 evenings (3 hrs each time) trying to get answers from CSR’s and Tech’s and we were told several things like….”you had to migrate your emails from the old att account to the new u-verse account within 60 days or you lose all of your accounts and info forever” ……. After numerous conversations and no ability to regain our lost information we were left with no other choice but to create new att email accounts. We lost very important information and att tried to blame Yahoo for taking over the emails and erasing our info. Nothing but finger pointing and no resolution. Another answer was…”The sales person who sold us the u-verse pkg should have told us about the email migration”. YA THINK??? Had we recieved a call on any of our cell phones or land line or recieved an email or a letter or something about this email migration, we would have been able to keep our email addresses and all of the important documents saved in folders that we will never see again. And…..I never did get a call back from the store manager at ATT in Union City where we signed up for this in the first place. Needless to say…..we love our DVR but have poor landline connections. We are just upset that we pay for att internet & email usage but they don’t seem to care about our needs. They love getting paid on time every month but cannot resolve problems.
Wow. Sorry for all the problems. The customer service (in our area) when have had a technical problem has been outstanding with U-verse. They come out right away if there is a problem. I agree that they don’t seem as trained on the phone with email issues and the like. Or at least when we got U-verse. Maybe that’s improved in our area since then. Good luck!
I have had huge issues with ATT Uverse and Outlook. For 3 weeks it worked fine and then (with no changes from my end) multiple pop up boxes asking for my password appeared. I made sure all ports and authentication options were accurate, but still kept asking for password and bouncing.
3 hours on phone, then an offer for Pay support……..they suggested I log in and reset my password…..got all the way through and service box has been appearing for 10 days saying “ATT is experiencing problems with this service, cannot reset password at this time”. Yikes……terrible service!!! Thought I made a good decision switching from TWC, but this makes me regret decision. Outlook is still industry standard and ATT needs to support it. Stay with your current provider!!!!
I have had the same issue as everyone else regarding sending mail from Outlook. It works great for days and then all of a sudden I start getting send/receive messages and it keeps asking me for my password. I do this about 10 times and then have to login via the web or test the connections in my email account and then it starts working again. I finally decided to do the unthinkable. I am slowly migrating my mail to a new exchange account that I set up with Go Daddy. It works fabulous and I haven’t missed an email yet. Think about it. AT&T email is pretty bad if you really need reliable email. The only thing worse than changing your email address is not getting important emails or not being able to send them.
Just contact att and demand they unblock your outlook default port, most likely 25, and refuse to pay their tech support fee. It is rediculous that it is such an easy fix to a problem they created.
Make sure that both your incoming and outgoing email server settings are set to the following:
mail.yourdomain.com
Check to make sure your email client (typically outlook or outlook express) has outgoing email set to use authentication.
Your ISP may be filtering PORT 25. More and more ISP’s are following in this trend that prevents any email other than yourisp.com from being sent from your ISP. Typically contacting them (your ISP) will get this resolved.
Another option is to set your outgoing mail to use PORT 26.