I posted this here because I use Outlook as my email app, but this really applies to any email app that uses an IMAP ATT/Yahoo account. I post this error and solution for others that might experience this.
Setup: ATT email account setup thru Yahoo mail service with Outlook 2019 on Windows 10 home.
Situation:
The ATT IMAP account in Outlook has been setup with a secondary mail key and functioning perfectly for many years. Suddenly Outlook displays a connection error (Error: Cannot connect to server) and presents the box to enter the correct password to connect to the server. The error created on every attempt to connect to the server and Outlook could not download or send any emails. I could connect to the account on the Yahoo web page and thru my iPhone.
Solution:
Since this connection problem was in Outlook and not my iPhone or Web page, and is password related this pointed to a change in security for Outlook settings or a secondary mail key as the problem since iPhone and Web mail doesn’t use a secondary mail key.
I contacted ATT support (had to ask for a supervisor that knew what I was talking about). ATT had not made any “changes” to cause this, but he verified that my current secondary mail key no longer worked. Why? He said he didn’t know but it seems to happen with older accounts. Upon creating a new secondary mail key I noticed that the first secondary mail key I created was exactly to the day 3 years ago. How many think that is just a coincidence?
Solution was to create a new secondary mail key and connection was instantly restored.
So, does that mean that secondary mail keys have an expiration date? Appears that way for ATT/Yahoo. Haven’t had that problem with Gmail.
HTH, Dana:))
