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Level 1

13 points

Why does Mail say 'account already exists' when I'm setting up email account?

I am reinstalling a hotmail email account on Mail on my desktop. I got the message that 'this account already exists' and was stopped from doing the set up. The email account is not listed in my mailboxes or in the internet accounts section.

It is my appleID though...could that be causing my problems?

It works fine on my other device (iphone 5) just not working on iMac

I have been troubleshooting a password error problem this email account has using the help from on this thread

Password for email account can't be changed in Internet Accounts

delete and re-install was the last solution I was offered.

Help appreciated 🙂

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6), Mail 9.3

Posted on Mar 17, 2018 4:33 AM

Best reply

Crocnposs Author

Level 1

13 points

Posted on Mar 17, 2018 10:31 PM

Hi Eric,

Thanks for the suggestion. In the meantime I tried something else and fixed it!

deleting icloud
re-installing the mail account
re-installing icloud

I strongly suspect the problem was caused by icloud, when an email account has the same email address as AppleID.

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Why does Mail say 'account already exists' when I'm setting up email account?

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