AT&T Community Forums

Setting Up Thunderbird for AT&T Email

I've used Thunderbird as my email client for years; however, about a month ago it stopped working and now I receive the following message, "Sending of password for user [email scrubbed] did not succeed. Mail server inbound.att.net responded: [SYS/TEMP] Server error - Please try again later". What do I need to do to get things working again in Thunderbird?

Responses

Accepted Solution

Official Solution

ATTHelp

Community Support

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232.9K Messages

11 months ago

Let us help you stay signed in to your email, @adapt73.

We have some troubleshooting options from our Login and Email Solutions article that we'd like you to try:

Clear your browser's cache and cookies - This is the most common fix. Sites change over time, and when they do, the files saved in your cache and cookies may conflict with what's actually coded on the site. Clearing it out ensures that your browser is using the settings designed for the website.
Update your browser - Many features are only compatible with the latest browser, so we recommend updating it.
Disable any browser tools or add-ons - Tools and add-ons can sometimes cause browsers to run slowly and crash.
Disable your firewall - Running more than one firewall at a time may cause slow Internet connection speeds.

We recommend that you use Currently to access your email, since it's the official platform for AT&T mail, and shouldn't give you any trouble.

We'll be here if you need further assistance!

Blanca, AT&T Community Specialist

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adapt73

2 Messages

11 months ago

This was a typical frustrating AT&T response. The suggestions were useless and I have no desire to use Currently, and go back to the 20th century. Let me ask my question a different way. How do you configure AT&T email settings to work on Thunderbird?

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ATTHelp

Community Support

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232.9K Messages

11 months ago

Thank your for clarifying your request, adapt73.

Thunderbird is not one of the email clients that we support. However, we will see what we can do to help you set it up.

Before you set up Thunderbird, there is something digitally that needs to be done and that is to create a secure mail key. Follow these steps:

Go to your myAT&T Profile. Sign in, if asked.
Scroll to My linked accounts, select the email account that needs a secure mail key.
Scroll to Secure mail key, select Manage secure mail key.
Choose the email address that you’d like to use, if you have more than one.
Select Add secure mail key. Enter a nickname for the secure mail key to make it easy to recognize.
Choose Create secure mail key.
Select Copy secure mail key to clipboard. Make a note of your secure mail key for further updates.
- For security purposes, the secure mail key only displays until you select OK.
- If you lose or forget the secure mail key, you can always create new secure mail keys.
Select OK.
Go to your preferred email app, replace the existing password with your secure mail key. For an IMAP account, delete the existing password for both the IMAP and SMTP servers. Replace them with your secure mail key.

After creating the secure mail key, then we can move over to Thunderbird.

Since Thunderbird is not one of the email clients that we actually support, we do not have a walkthrough that we could give you, but we do have the email server settings that are needing to be used.

Email protocol	Inbound server	Inbound port	SSL	Outbound server	Outbound port
POP3	inbound.att.net	995	Yes	outbound.att.net	465
IMAP	imap.mail.att.net	993	Yes	smtp.mail.att.net	465 or 587

As you see, you have two choices here. POP3 which is an older server setting and IMAP which is a newer protocal.

Since we have had you create a secure mail key, IMAP will be the server settings to use. Quick tip: Each time you have the password field just use the Secure Mail Key.

If there is anything else that we can do for you, please let us know.

Thank you for using the AT&T Community Forums.

Matthew, AT&T Community Specialist

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