Accounts and aliases

[Boulevardier]

A few weeks ago, Graham_A (Very Experienced Person) said -

"Each individual email address will require a separate Mail App password for use with an email client. The only exception is if the address is an alias of another blueyonder email address."

How can I tell if any of my Blueyonder accounts are aliases of one of the others, and what difference does it make to the app password(s) if/when they are ?

Mike

[Zach_R]

Hi @Boulevardier,

Thank you for your post and welcome back to our community forums. We're here to help.

If you're looking to find your email accounts and aliases, you can do that via the My Virgin Media online account. There's some more details on how to access and use your email service here, and you can also refer to this thread regarding aliases too.

Let us know how you get on and if you need any further assistance.

Thanks,
 

[coenoby]

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@Boulevardier wrote:

"How can I tell if any of my Blueyonder accounts are aliases of one of the others,"

I don't think there is an easy way to check whether an email address is an alias for another,

What you can do though is to check whether an email account has any aliases addresses.

Sign into a Blueyonder email account via VM webmail on a desktop device and use the "compose"option as if you were creating a new email.  Check the "From" address and see if you can access a drop down menu.  If you can, that will list all alias email addresses for that email account.

"and what difference does it make to the app password(s) if/when they are ?"

It is important to understand that an alias email address is not actually an email account in its own right. Any emails sent to an alias address automatically appear in the main email account.

To put it another way, an alias email address is just another way of accessing the parent email account. That means the alias address does not have its own password.

To access an alias email address via webmail you have to use the parent email account's password.

If you are using an email app or client to manage an alias email address then you need to use the parent email account's mail app password in the app's settings.

Just to complete the picture, if you change the password for the parent email account you will have to use that new password with the alias email address.

I hope that makes sense.

Coenoby

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[Boulevardier]

Thanks for very thorough explanantion Coenoby.  I’m not getting any “alias” info. from the webmail.  When I go to MVM with each email address there is only one that gives option of “Manage other accounts”, and it lists the other three accounts.  The other three accounts do not give option to manage other accounts.  Is this an indication that the one that shows the three others is the main account and the othere are all aliases?

Thinking that this one might be the primary account, I have generated a new app password for the account that lists the others, and this account sets up as it should.  Following your advice that the other accounts (if aliases) should accept the same password, I tried to set up another account with the same password, but it fails.

I’m not sure where to go next.

Mike

[coenoby]

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@Boulevardier wrote:

" When I go to MVM with each email address there is only one that gives option of “Manage other accounts”, and it lists the other three accounts.  The other three accounts do not give option to manage other accounts"

That's a clear indication that the account that lists all three is your Primary (main) email account and that the other 3 are Secondary accounts.

Secondary accounts are email accounts in their own right, not aliases addresses of another email account. Blueyonder allowed you to set up secondary email accounts as well as aliases. (Just to make things more complicated you could even set up alias addresses of secondary email accounts but we won't go there 😉 .)

"Is this an indication that the one that shows the three others is the main account"

Yes, in VM terms, the Primary account.

"and the othere are all aliases?"

No, as I said earlier it suggests that they are stand alone secondary email accounts not aliases of the primary account.

"Following your advice that the other accounts (if aliases) should accept the same password, I tried to set up another account with the same password, but it fails."

Which proves they are not alias addresses.

"I’m not sure where to go next."

You need to reset the passwords for each of those 3 secondary email accounts.

Do that by signing into the MVM for each of the three email accounts in turn. The process to reset their passwords and generating new mail app passwords is exactly the same as resetting the Primary email account's password.

Alternatively, you could try the forgotten password route to reset the password for each of these 3 secondary accounts.  https://www.virginmedia.com/my-virgin-media/forgotten-details/password  However, I suspect that route will fail because I doubt that those accounts have a password recovery question set.

If you cannot reset the password for these three secondary accounts one of the Forum Team (VM staff such as Zach_R) should be able to help you. However, make sure that you make it clear you just want the passwords reset for these three problem secondary accounts not your primary email account.

Coenoby

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[Boulevardier]

Thanks for the advice Coenoby.  I tried all that, and yesterday got my two email accounts working properly on the computer (there are two other secondary accounts that I haven’t yet bothered to set up, as I haven’t used them for a long time).

I then added one of the accounts that were working on the computer to my Android phone, using the same app password as used on the computer.  This seemed to work fine, and I thought job done.  However, I closed down the computer last night, and when I restarted it this morning it asked for password.  I entered the same app password that had worked yesterday, and it wouldn’t accept it.  The phone, however, seems to still be working fine with that account (and with that password).

I really thought that I’d got there: but no.  Can you help again?

Mike

[Matthew_ML]

Thank you for reaching out and I am sorry to hear this.

What happens when you try a different password, it may need 3 different passwords for 3 different accounts?

I would try forgot password on all them reset them and try again, please keep us updated. Cheers 

[Boulevardier]

Thanks.  At the moment I only have two email addresses set up on the computer - with a separate app password for each one.  They worked OK.  I then tried adding one of them to the phone, and that worked on the phone as well.  But when I rebooted the computer. it wouldn't accept it's password for the email address I had just added to the phone, although the address still worked on the phone. 

Are you saying that the phone might need a different password from the computer - for the same email address?  I don't know how I could do that.

Mike

[Matthew_ML]

It might need you to re add the password, if it working on everything apart from the computer this means it will be an issue with that as everything else is working fine.

Are you using Outlook or loggin into the web to see the emails?

Please can you also let me know if it lets you login via our website. cheers 

[Boulevardier]

I am using Thunderbird as email client.  I was able to log in to My Virgin Media, but then selecting Virgin Media Mail on My Virgin Media resulted in a blank page which timed-out.