For those of you who have a comcast.net email:
Have you transitioned to Yahoo?
Have you had any problems getting your email?
Jane
I thought there were some Tidbits subscribers here that use a comcast.net email. I keep getting Comcast emails that tell me I need to move my comcast.net to Yahoo. I don’t know what the procedure is – and haven’t found any answers — but I am scared to do this. I was hoping that someone here had advice.
Apparently, Comcast is having users move to Yahoo in stages. I haven’t received any notifications from Comcast yet about my accounts, so I can’t say much about exactly how the procedure works. Looking at Yahoo’s help page for the migration (see below), it looks pretty similar to how one of my old Internet providers (SBC Global) had users migrate to Yahoo a few years ago.
You’ll need to make sure you know your Comcast email address and your password, you’ll need to sign out of any other Yahoo web accounts you may have, and then you’ll need to go to a migration website to agree to the migration and Yahoo’s Terms of Service. Before you do that, double check that you do not have one of the “gotchas”, e.g., email attachments over 25 MB, more than 4,100 folders, more than 10,000 contacts, or folder names more than 240 characters long.
Once you accept everything, your email and contacts should transfer to Yahoo automatically, and, if I understand correctly, you can sign into Yahoo Mail using your old Comcast address and password.
I recommend watching the video and carefully reading the information at Yahoo’s Comcast migration site:
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Some tips that come to mind:
Plan on at least a month or two, if possible, of overlap before cancelling or stopping checking your Comcast account to ensure the transition was set up correctly.As soon as your Yahoo address is active, set up automatic forwarding to it from your Comcast account, if possible.Maintain a list of any email address-change notifications you need to send and have sent to affected companies and people.- Ensure you have a backup or copies of important and treasured emails.
Check all of your 2-factor authentication setups to make sure none are using your Comcast email address.
Personally, I feel it’s hard to help with this kind of transition remotely. If there is anybody who can assist you in person, I think asking them for help will make things quicker and easier.
That doesn’t match at all to the instructions on the aforementioned Comcast instruction page on how to accomplish the transition. The email address remains the same @comcast.net, it just is maintained by Yahoo IT folks instead of those at Comcast, so no need to notify anybody about a change of address. Nor is there a need to forward any yahoo mail to comcast unless you have two accounts and want to do that.
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This happened a year or so ago with Cox Communications. The transition was quite simple, but I gotta say that you’ll be doing yourself a favor if you just create a Gmail account and transition to that instead. The Yahoo email they’re switching you to is free, but you’re subjected to ads appearing in your inbox feed every time you open the mobile app, which quite frankly, sucks. The desktop/web version isn’t much better.
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You can get Yahoo mail via other mail clients, like Apple Mail or Thunderbird, so you don’t need to use the Yahoo apps.
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My old sbcglobal accounts were transitioned at some point years ago to Yahoo with no issues and I did not have to do anything so if the comcast situation is similar, it should be an easy process. I use Apple Mail with no issues for all of my accounts including Gmail. The only thing I use the Yahoo web page sign-in for is to check if the occasional spam message is really spam or not.
Thanks for adding that I can move to Gmail! How can I transition to Gmail? What is the procedure that all my folders etc… transfer?
(My husband passed away 4 years ago and I still check his yahoo email. The ads drive me crazy. I am thinking it’s time to delete his email because nothing important shows up now.)
Jane
I don’t know if you remember that I had a problem with Apple Mail and I couldn’t send any email. Someone (maybe you?) suggested that I go to Comcast.net settings and click on allowing other Apps to use comcast.net. That solved it –and I could send email with Mail!!! However, yesterday I was using Mail to read my comcast.net email and I could not send a reply!!! I haven’t changed anything in Comcast settings and don’t have a clue what changed! Any advice how to fix it –again??
jane
You can export and migrate to Google using Xfinity’s export tool. Instructions for the export stages are available at Xfinity’s support site (link below).
That said, I strongly recommend accepting Comcast’s offer to move to Yahoo mail instead of moving to Google simply because Comcast is offering an automated procedure that appears to be working well for most users, at least judging by the relative number of complaints in Xfinity support forums is an indicator.
Once your email is migrated to Yahoo, you can configure Apple Mail to send and receive mail from Yahoo pretty easily.
Yes, that was me that made the suggestion that fixed things with sending from Comcast. I have no obvious suggestion at the moment. Perhaps it is a temporary issue, or perhaps you already migrated to Yahoo by accident?
No, I haven’t migrated to Yahoo yet. I think you may be right just to accept moving to Yahoo.
I probably should back up my Comcast emails. But I really don’t know how to do that. What App/steps should I follow?
It looks like you can use the Comcast export tool to do that.
From the instructions I linked earlier, you would choose the “Download” option in step 3, and MBOX probably would be the best format in step 5. (MBOX is a standard format for storing email, and most email programs are capable of importing it.)
That said, I haven’t actually tried Comcast’s export tool, so I can’t fully vouch for it.
I think it is reasonable to use the export tool to save your email and contacts, but I wouldn’t do anything with the exported file (except save it) unless the Yahoo migration doesn’t work.
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OP:
I’d visit the page linked in josehill’s reply from 2 days ago.
Remember, once you have the comcast/yahoo account up and running (via a web browser), I believe there’s an option “in there somewhere” that you have to set so that you can use the email with 3rd-party apps (such as Apple Mail.app). Especially if you have trouble sending via Mail.app.
I, too, migrated from an [old] comcast email address to yahoo. I neglected to take notes on just what I did, but I recall it went pretty smoothly. I should also mention that I had never USED the comcast account for much email (next-to-nothing).
I guess this is obvious, but when you’re trying to diagnose email problems, what often works is to send/rcv emails to yourself. Do you have ANOTHER (non-comcast) account from which you can do this?
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I use a Comcast App to read my comcast.net email. I have visited Jose’s page several times. In Comcast.net settings I have enabled 3rd party email apps. I chose Apple mail. It worked sending email for a while, but didn’t for a few days. I’ll just keep trying!
I don’t have any other email. But I have sent emails to my self to see if Mail works. It didn’t.
I refuse to use Yahoo. Are there other options beside GMail to move Comcast mail to?
Thank you Patrick
You can move your email messages to any provider you like. The Xfinity Export tool will export the email messages into a format that is usable by nearly any service. For some services, it apparently automates the actual transfer (see below).
HOWEVER - you will not be able to keep using your Comcast email address/account once Comcast shuts down its email service, unless you transfer your account to Yahoo when Comcast offers it to you.
If your objection is to using the Yahoo mail app, just use Apple Mail, Thinderbird, or something else to access Yahoo mail. Of course, if you have some other objection to Yahoo, such as concerns about user account privacy, that is a completely different issue that we probably can’t solve here.
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I view all email services provided by companies whose main business is advertising to be equivalent for privacy. This includes Google and Yahoo-AOL. All rely on analyzing your email to sell targeted advertising and personal data. I think Apple (iCloud) and Microsoft (Outlook) are marginally better for privacy because both are big companies with diverse sources of revenue. This could change at any time, though.
A funny thing is that Gmail may be somewhat more secure than others because of Google’s lack of human customer service. It is impossible to social engineer call center employees that don’t exist.
Next, Yahoo is owned by a private equity firm and doesn’t really have much resemblance to the Silicon Valley company many of us remember. Why does this matter to Comcast email users? Because private equity owners have a very short term focus and concentrate on extracting money, not building ongoing businesses. So it is very likely Yahoo Mail users will be facing a lot of changes both soon and in the future. Many will be negative for users’ privacy.
If I was advising somebody looking for a free email account not tied to an ISP or to private equity, I probably would recommend Apple (iCloud), Microsoft (Outlook), or Google (Gmail).
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I just looked again at the “Exporting your data to another email provider” article I linked to in my last post. I noticed that Comcast is using a service called ShuttleCloud to move emails from Xfinity to Microsoft, Gmail, and AOL, while using a different method for moving emails to Apple Mail. I’ve had good experiences with ShuttleCloud migrations in corporate contexts. It’s a good, respected tool.
That said, I want to emphasize again that if you want to keep using your Comcast email address to send and receive email after Comcast discontinues the service, your only option is to accept account migration to Yahoo. All other methods merely archive your existing Comcast messages to your pre-existing account at Gmail, Microsoft, AOL, Apple, etc.
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