Question

I’m trying to write a script that logs into my email server(yahoo) and checks for messages from a certain sender. This is my first time useing the IMAP module and I can’t seem to get it to work. Right now I have only a few lines of code.

from imaplib import *

server = IMAP4_SSL('mail.yahoo.com')

server.login('myusername','mypassword')

mail_folders = server.list()

for folders in mail_folders:
    print(folders)

at this point all I’m trying to do is login to the mail server and retrieve a list of folders. However I never get connected. the interpreter throws a

[Errno 10060] A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly 
respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host 
has failed to respond

I’m not sure if this has something to do with SSL or what. I have managed to get a connection with httplib.HTTPSConnection, But I would rather use IMAP then webscrape.

Answer 1

I think the problem is just the server name that is wrong. Replacing 'mail.yahoo.com' with 'imap.mail.yahoo.com' worked for me.