Mail on my Mac is "unable to verify account name or password" for my AOL account.

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Level 1

58 points

Mail on my Mac is "unable to verify account name or password" for my AOL account.

There was an earlier question asked about this same problem back in April (Mail on my Mac is "unable to verify account name or password" for my AOL account. The password is correct, there is no two-step verification, and the account is active. Any ideas how to fix this? Thanks!) and the replies did not provide a successful solution. I have been having the exact same issue almost since Verizon switched all users over to AOL Mail.

Mac Mail is often unable to login to my AOL (former Verizon) mail account, sometimes simply not connecting, other times giving me the "not connected" icon on my Inbox. If I try to send email using AOL. I get the popup asking for my password. I enter the correct password (password has been the smae since I started with Verizon close to 20 years ago) and it is rejected. I have tried setting up the account in Internet Accounts again from scratch, no help. The only thing that seems to break the logjam is to actually log into AOL with Safari, go look at my mail there and then most of the time the logjam breaks and Mail starts downloading the messages. Sometimes, like today, even this does not work. Sometimes after breaking the logjam, the problem occurs later in the same day.

This is driving me insane because transferring all my mail to another account (gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc.) is major work notifying government agencies, banks, online vendors, etc. but I will have to do it if this situation continues.

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Dec 2, 2018 5:44 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,382 points

Dec 2, 2018 7:55 AM in response to mudbucker

The simplest solution I have found is going to mail.aol.com on a web browser and editing your forwarding settings to go to your gmail or other account. Verizon's AOL accounts are notoriously difficult to setup even in Outlook on Windows let alone Mac OS X Mail. They do not follow their own documentation for setting up IMAP. I spent a good hour trying a variety of settings with a customer only to get told it doesn't work. You can always change your reply to address to keep as AOL, or do as gmail. It really doesn't matter.

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Answer 2

mudbucker Author

Level 1

58 points

Dec 5, 2018 4:51 AM in response to a brody

Well, the idea of forwarding to gmail is anon-starter because although I set it up AOL mail did one of the two following:

1. it didn't forward anything

2. it did forward but also kept a copy so when Mail was able to get into AOL, I would get the emails twice, once from AOL and once from gmail.

I also followed gmail's instructions on changing the "reply to" and "from" fields. The setup process asked for my AOL username and password, and shock of shocks those were rejected...so it's apparently not just a Mac Mail thing. AOL played nice for the last two days but is on the fritz yet again and my old standby of logging into the website is not reliably clearing the jams any more. So I am left with checking my AOL account first through the browser every time I go to check mail, waste time trying to unjam it, and giving up at some point and replying using the browser and hoping that at some point in the future mail I want to save will eventually be seen by Mac Mail.

Verizon has washed their hands of email by moving it to AOL (where there is no support unless you pay for an AOL account as well) which is just a big fat middle finger to it's subscribers. The effort to switch to a new address, with all the hassles of notifying every single entity from the US government on down of my new email address is too onerous at this point. Maybe someday it will be possible to make email addresses portable the way cell phone numbers are, but I am not holding my breath.

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Mail on my Mac is "unable to verify account name or password" for my AOL account.

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