New Sky Email Tips & Solutions - so far...

[the_sky_goat]

http://mail.tools.sky.com

the above link is the only way i can access my email account, if i go to the homepage log in and go to email and tools i just get a blank page or http 500 error. also i only have 1 email account with sky not an additional one as i never set one up, so why does your link work and the homepage doesnt ???? i am very confused about all this so any info would be great

right ive tried again on the homepage and the tools/email tab on the hompage url is
Sky.com - Email & Tools>Tools Page
which is different from your link above so can it be changed on the home page so tools and email is separate

The link I provided is simply a direct link to the email front-end. It isn't just for additional addresses, it's for all addresses.

The sky homepage is full of redirect pages and slight of hand, which does eventually pass you through to the right page, but as you have seen, if it gets itself confused you end up with a blank page, or an error.

Basically, my link is a direct shortcut. Going via the sky homepage takes you round the houses a bit to get to the same place.

[63098792]

Just thought I'd add details of my experience - maybe it'll help someone else. I don't know if this exact solution has been suggested before but if it has, I didn't find it despite searching several times. Credit should go to Dikda for giving me the steer. Anyway ...

My problem was that since the migration I haven't been able to download my email using Outlook 2002 SP3. I'd checked and re-checked the settings but no joy - Outlook constantly complained about my username/password. I tried the “unlockcaptcha” malarkey too but it too complained about my username/password. Sky's webmail worked without any problems.

This evening I stumbled across Dikda's post and after that, combined with the constant complaints about username/password from Outlook and unlockcaptcha, the penny finally dropped. Now this is just my opinion of how the system works - I don't know for sure. But having concluded that it works this way, the solution was obvious - and it worked!

As someone else has said, there's 2 points of authentication/logon/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. 1) Sky's portal and 2) Google's mail servers. When you use a mail client you're going directly to Google's servers. When you use Sky's webmail, you authenticate yourself logging in but when you access your email they (Sky) go to Google's servers for you and obtain your mail. The important point is the credentials for these two separate systems are just that - seperate entities. They SHOULD be set to the same values (Sky assume this) and, if so, everything will be fine. If not though, the problems start. When accessing webmail, Sky access Google's servers on your behalf but I don't believe they use the credentials you supplied when you logged on. I think they use stored credentials - the ones they passed to Google as part of the migration. This explains why webmail worked but the email client didn't.

Now it's reasonable to assume that since Sky offer the facility for you to change your password (through the "Edit my Sky Profile" link on the "Email & Tools" page), they would need to have set up the process to update the Google servers with the new password too. To us, it looks like it's all one set of credentials but I don't think so. And to maintain that illusion (after all, Sky want you to think it's all still them), Sky need to sync password changes across the two systems for you. So, to test my theory, I changed my password through the above link (actually I changed it 3 times because I wanted to keep my existing one and you can't go straight back - it bans your last 2 passwords as potential new ones). Sure enough, entering my new password in Outlook (no delay, I just went straight ahead and did it) caused my inbox to swell with all the uncollected mail that's been accumulating since September.

I can only assume that, as with Dikda, somehow Sky passed a different set of credentials to Google than I was actually using. Possibly, as Dikda says, the password they originally issued.

Well, there it is. I hope it's of use to someone.

[Lynne]

I need sooo much help! Not understanding a great deal of technical info I rang Sky customer support for help. When i log into sky there is no prob when I go to Tools and e mail there is only half a page there and I can't get in at all. Rang sky as I said and they told me, I think, couldn't understand some of it don't know where the call centre is, that they know a lot of people can't access e mail this way. She told me that there is no solution, that I can't get outlook express to work until I can get into sky tools to change the settings. Some of the sites I use will not accept hotmail, only addresses from an ISP. She had no idea when the e mail might work again, told me she hoped I had found her helpful, said goodbye "maam" and rang off. Goodness knows how much I paid for that little nugget. As you can see I am not happy with Sky and think I signed up under false pretences!

[psybear]

I switched to Sky a couple of months ago, and although I found this forum at the time and followed various suggestions, I just could not get my Sky email to work via Outlook. Being exceptionally busy with work, I gave up on it, and relied on older accounts and web services for email.

Today, suitably rested and with some rare spare time, I decided to invest some of that time in trying to resolve the issue. I found this thread (which post-dates my previous postings) and, in no time at all, I have it cracked - two new addresses for me, one for the wife, all working seamlessly via Outlook.

Lots of replies in this thread, very few 'thank yous' to the OP.

Thanks very much SkyGoat - quite literally could not have done this without your post - very clearly laid out, and very useful links to have opened in tabs whilst working my way through it all.

First Class!

[the_sky_goat]

Hooray for me!

Seriously though, thanks very much, it's nice to hear back from people once they have fixed their problems!

Happy New Year!

[nick73]

Puzzeled.
I contacted a local company to send some details to me, After a couple of days I asked why they hadn't sent them. They said they had?They had sent them to my bt.com address, whilst I was onthe phone they resent them, still didn't get the email. I asked them to send to my sky.com address. I got that one.(it's not sitting at my sky.com site)
Now my question is why? I recieve lots of emails to my BT address, everyday, so my outlook express is set up correctly.
Just wondering if anyone has an answer.

[PaulSky]

If you have left BT your account is subject to being closed at some point but as long as you have set up Outlook express to pick up from the POP server at BT you shouldn't have an issue as long as you send via the sky smtp server.

[oxter]

Hello

I'm new to sky/google but the e-mail seems pretty similar to BT Yahoo from whom I migrated. There is not the facility afaik to switch user other than log out/log in. I operate a couple of e.mail addresses and my wife uses another so it would be convenient to simply switch - is this possible?

[oxter]

Further to above - the yahoo facility of setting up files for e-mails was very useful for keeping things organised. This facility does not seem to exist with Google mail??

[Alan b]

is this possible?

It can't be done, you can set up multiple accounts (and so email addresses) but you would have to log out and them login to access each one.