Telstra, surprise surprise, are making life just that little bit harder.
I have spoken about Telstra before and their threat to leave the email business. I have also rabbited on about the advantages of not using an OptusNet, Telstra, iinet email address at all.
The article I rushed out last warning everyone about Telstra shutting down their email service turned out to be a false alarm as they walked back their decision only a few months later.
So Telstra it seems are not going anywhere but if you really want to use their email service they are going to make you work just that little bit harder.
If you want, or still do, access your telstra email using a web browser then a) I think you are a glutton for punishment and b) nothing will change for you. But for those of you that want to use a dedicated mail application such as Apple Mail (the best), Outlook (the worst) or Thunderbird ( for fans of 1990’s application design) then you need to create an application specific password.
Lets say you have a telstra account and the email address is rennyw@bigpond.com.au and the password for this account has always been ABC1234.
Sometime soon your Apple Mail application is going to ask you to put in this password again.
You enter it and… ERROR. You enter it again, this time with your tongue sticking out of the corner of your mouth; ERROR. You can do this all day until most of your hair falls out but your mail application will tell you this password is now wrong…. which actually, it isn’t.
By now you’d be thinking your account has been hacked and you might even risk losing what remains of your hair and call Telstra support. They will tell you they don’t support any third-party mail applications but they will help you change the password… which will not help.
What they won’t tell you is No password will work with Outlook or Apple Mail because it is not an Application Specific Password. So please, don’t bother changing anything.
So, because Telstra won’t tell you what to do, allow me…
Open Safari or Firefox.
Log into Telstra webmail using your familiar password. (ugly, isn’t?)
Click on the 9 dots in the top right hand corner.
Choose Settings
Then Accounts
Click on Generate Password
Give your app password a name (iMac, iPhone)
This is a very ugly password so copy it and paste it into a text document or something like that.
To make matters worse you may very well need to create a password for each of your devices so you may as well do them all at the same time.
Now, when your Mac asks for a password it is THIS password you enter. Similarly, if and when your iPhone your iPad asks says the password is wrong, enter the password you created for your iPhone for iPad in steps 6 and 7.
Of course, if this all seems to much, drop us a line as we can arrange a service call you set it up for you.
