Could someone PLEASE tell me how to set up more than one POP mail account.

Question

I am soooo frustrated. Before I upgraded to Tiger I had no problems setting up my mail accounts. Now, I can only set up one POP mail account. I have three mail accounts that I desperately need to set up from the same ISP server, all POP accounts. On Panther and earlier, all I had to do was add the accounts. Now I have ONE POP account and when I try to set up another I get an error message that I already have a POP account set up. Why is this happening and what happened to the old system that worked just fine. I am so annoyed with this. It simply defies logic!!!!

Answer 1

I don't know if this will work or not, but why don't you try using bogus pop and/or smtp server information when you initially establish the accounts with Mail's setup wizard? Just continue through the "warning: cannot validate server" messages that the wizard will give you. Then go into Mail > preferences > accounts and highlight each of the new accounts, one at a time, and try changing the incoming pop and outgoing smtp mail server information to what it is supposed to be?
For the "Outgoing" server just use the pull-down menu, to select it, and when all accounts are done, go into that same pull-down menu and choose "Edit Server List..." to remove the bogus smtp server information.
Incoming should be just renaming that pop server in the "Incoming server" field.
If that doesn't work, I've got something riskier you could try, again with no guarantees, and that is editing your ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist file using either the Property List Editor that comes with XCode Tools (will launch automagically when you click on that .plist file if XCode is installed) or with the pico editor in Terminal, and possibly renaming some folders in your ~/Library/Mail folder, too. Again, start with the bogus server info, then find those entries in the .plist file and make changes there.
Note: if not familiar with the notation, "~" means your "home" directory.
(if this solves your problem, or is actually helpful towards arriving at a solution to your problem, please consider marking this reply as "helpful" or "solved," in addition to, if applicable, marking this question as "answered")