AOL mail won't send. "A copy has been placed in your Outbox. Sending the message content to the server failed."

I believe we are having the same issue. A week or so back, I changed my AOL password and since then using the iPhone 4 email app, I can receive AOL mail but sending fails and is left in the outbox. I have tried extensive troubleshooting incl. all the suggestions here. Was at Apple store yesterday - they had another customer earlier in the day with the same problem and they couldn't figure it. We even tried initializing the phone to factory and wiped everything out. I then added AOL and it still failed. None of my other email accounts have issues and AOL works fine through the mobile interface in Safari. I also spent an hour this morning with an senior Applecare person and she feels its an AOL issue.

AOL refuses to help unless I pay them.

(I have a never broken, current IOS, iPhone 4, 2yrs old using ATT)

how do you have your aol mail set up through Aol or other

if you have it set up under AOL and al the info looks like this

• AOL Mail SMTP server address: smtp.aol.com
• AOL Mail SMTP user name: Your AOL Mail screen name (what comes before "@aol.com" in your AOL Mail address; if your address is me@aol.com, for example, the corresponding screen name is "me")
• AOL Mail SMTP password: Your AOL Mail password
• AOL Mail SMTP port: 587
• AOL Mail SMTP TLS/SSL required: yes

Try to set it up under other with these settings and see if it works there

This is not my thread, but I will chime in once more since I have gone through this already myself. If you create AOL with AOL, you must type a full email address (incl. aol.com) and that info is moved to the SMTP box which is grayed out/unchangeable. If you create AOL with Other you can use the full name for the acocunt information and you can use just the user name for incoming mail server and outgoing mail server. But sending will fail box ways.

I searched high and low and finally figured it out. Go to settings and select the SMTP aol address under Outgoing Mail Server. I have both aol and Gmail so it was simple for me because I turned the aol off and the gmail on and the problem was instantly fixed. If you dont have a gmail, you may want to set one up and attach it to your phone. Also if you want to switch to gmail, they allow you to bring in all aol emails while you inform colleagues of the change. I hope that helps!

Interesting. Firstly I have been on AOL since the early 90s with no current intention to switch as my primary personal email account.

I have two email accounts on my iphone - AOL and my email from my business website. I deleted both and then recreated first the business account and then the AOL account. Same error. Then I wasn't sure what you suggested but I turned off the AOL SMTP server and selected the business email SMTP server by turning it on with the same result. I still get the error "A Copy has been placed in your Outbox. Sending the mssage content to the server failed."

Perhaps this problem will get fixed by IOS 6. AOL will not talk to me unless I pay and Apple says its not their problem. So for the time being I use the AOL web interface in the iPhone's Safari to send emails from the phone.

Well here is something interesting - I didn't think of this permutation before. My AOL account I have been using all these years is not the "master". In other words, I set up another AOL account (my master which I have never ever used) on the iPhone and I can send from that account with no problems. So now I have one AOL account on my iPhone that works and another that doesn't.

That tells me it has to be on AOL and it's something about the properties or characteristics of my AOL account. Sadly, no one at AOL will help me trouble shoot this.

The problem has finally been solved by Apple. I have posted the instructions elsewhere here if you are reading this thread. It involves disabling the AOL SMTP entry and creating a new one with just an ID and not the ending "@AOL.COM".

I was soo excisted when I read this post(and your post elsewhere on the step by step of how to..........and.......it has not worked. Received new iphone5 yesterday and last night downloaded latest OS sfotware.....Getting the "Unable to connect to server" message when trying to email from phone using AOL despite getting emails from aol without a problem. FYI...all was working splendidly on iphone 4s without the above "fix" on the latest OS update....

Have turned phone and off, had others watch that I was doing as instructed, banged head on desk a couple of times......Further thoughts....? Ideas?

and....in a controlled experiment......

I added my aol account to my wife's iphone 5 running the latest verson of OS 6, without all the details above...and it worked fine.

The difference between the two phones is that my phone (the one that cannot send, but can receive aol email) is on my company's server. Will be trying to fund the fix on Monday since my previous iphone 4s worked fine!!!

Sheesh.

Hi All,

Think I found a solution.

When you set up the aol id set the name and description to be the name of the email id before the @symbol.

Set up the email id to look like the example below and you should be able to send emails.

E.g.

abcdefg

abcdefg@aol.com

password

abcdefg

Do give it a go and let me know if this works. Tested this with aol and it works for me.

After purchasing a new iphone4 my yahoo mail won't send. I can receive emails from the yahoo account, but when I try to send or reply receive this message: "A copy has been placed in your Outbox. Sending the message content to the server failed." I used my yahoo on the Safari, it works there but does not allow mails here. Actually not only yahoo but Gmail and My business Id as well. Nothing is working. Please help

THANK YOU Thomas.

I have been trying *everything* and nothing worked till I finally found your post:

"". When you set up the aol id set the name and description to be the name of the email id before the @symbol.

Set up the email id to look like the example below and you should be able to send emails.

E.g.

abcdefg

abcdefg@aol.com

password

abcdefg

""

Much appreciated!

Thomas suggestion also worked for me when everything else wouldn't. I had to delete the original aol account I setup and then set it up again with his suggestion. It worked like a charm. I didn't have to add another smtp server or anything - just the one it automatically created.

After it worked I went back in to the settings and was able to switch the email name back to my full name and the description back to "aol". It still worked after those changes. Seems like it just had to be setup Thomas' way in the initial setup.

Thomas's suggestion - although it seems completely implausible worked like a charm. After banging my head against the sudden inexplicable appearance of this issue (it worked fine for over a year and suddenly stopped this weekend.), the only thing I had to change was my input for "name" and "description." I didn't have to delete the account or anything. I have 3 aol accounts. Triied to send before change got error. Made the change to one account - went through. Tested next account - error. Made the change - went through.

Seriously - magic. THANK YOU THOMAS. I was about to give up on aol forever.