iPad provides very good support to all IMAP email services, like Gmail, MS Exchange, Yahoo Mail, AOL mail, Outlook and many others. In this iPad mail setup guide, we will show you how to add AOL mail account to iPad air, iPad mini and other iPad models. We will also include some tips and tricks why you can’t add your AOL account to iPad, how to fix it.
Add AOL Mail Account to iPad
AOL provides SMTP servers for the iPad’s Mail app and other email programs. Like its predecessors, such as iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad mini, the new iPad Air support AOL mail. While the iPad Air includes AOL as an email option, alternatively you can also set up your AOL email account manually. In this guide, we will show you how to set up AOL account on iPad Air with its built-in option other than the manually email configuration. iPad air will automatically fill up most information with less manual input or intervention.
1. Tap the “Mail” app on your iPad’s home screen, once the Mail app opens. If you are on iOS 10.3.3 or earlier, find and tap “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” in the sidebar and tap “Add Account.”
If you are on the latest iOS 11, Go to Settings > Accounts & Passwords and tap Add Account. You can refer to this tutorial to add AOL mail to iPhone.
2. You will see AOL as an email option by default. Tap on AOL, you will then be prompted to enter your AOL account credentails and other descriptions. Type your full AOL email address in the form such as “yourname@aol.com”, enter your AOL email password into the “Password” box. Type your name and description in the boxes individually.
3. Tap the next button, AOL server will then verify your credentials, if you have enterred the correct login and password, then you will see a screen as below.
iPad Air will automatically choose IMAP as the default AOL mail protocal. Every action you take with your AOL email on your iPad air is copied on the IMAP server. If you organize your email into folders, you can access your AOL email from elsewhere and see the same folders you set up on your iPad air. IMAP is ideal for email management on multiple devices, it can keep your AOL emails synced very well.
4. Tap save to confirm and finish adding the AOL account to iPad Air.
Adding AOL Mail Account to iPad Additional Tips
An alternative to setup AOL email on iPad is to use the manual configuration method. From the Settings > > “Accounts & Passwords”, you can choose Others other than AOL to enter into the manually setup mode. If you cannot add aol account to your iPad air, double check the manual setup and configurations, you need to use “Imap.aol.com” as the “Incoming Mail Server”, “smtp.aol.com” as the “Outgoing Mail Server”, make sure to input full email address into both “Incoming Mail Server” and “Outgoing Mail Server.” Check out AOL mail manual setup guide here.
Update Jan 2018: this article was originally published in 2014. For those who are using iOS 11 or later, please refer to the linked guide to setup AOL mail on iPhone instead.
As far as I can see the automatic setup does for aol does not work. There is no way to get the proper user Id. The automatic ID includes the @aol.com and you cannot edit the user Id field as the entire form that contains this is graded out. I solved this my turning off the main stmp and turning it on as the secondary. On this form I could edit the field. Too lazy to do this manually.