Using AOL and AIM mail

From MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Revision as of 18:17, 21 May 2006 by Elvey (talk | contribs) (Adding some secure connection info. Protects passwords and to some extent, the email too.)
Jump to navigationJump to search

Create a new account in Mozilla Suite or Thunderbird and choose IMAP as your server type. Then, use the following information to complete the fields:

Incoming server (IMAP) imap.aol.com
Port Leave it to be set automatically (993 for SSL)
Security Settings/connection AOL supports SSL, so you should probably use it.
Security Settings/Use secure authentication Do not check; AOL does not support this; password is protected anyway if you're using SSL.
Username Your screen name
Outgoing Server (SMTP) smtp.aol.com
Username Your screen name
Security/connection AOL supports SSL, so you should probably use it; use port 465 in this case.
Port 587 or 465 for SSL
Name Whatever you wish

You will be asked for the password when you connect for the first time.

You cannot manually add messages to the Inbox or Sent Items folders. Messages will be added to those folders after messages have been sent and received by the AOL server. You should probably use Local Folders if you want to store sent mail, email drafts, and templates. You can configure this under the account settings by selecting "Copies & Folders" under Account Settings. However, if you use Thunderbird/Mozilla (not AOL webmail or the AOL mail client) to create folders with different names (e.g. Drafts--Tbird and Sent--Tbird) and change your "Copies & Folders" account settings appropriately, you may be able to get Thunderbird to save drafts and sent mail in them; I did.

External Links