topic Help with New Outlook and Force9 in Email

Help with New Outlook and Force9

flubber — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 21:08:01 GMT

Hi,

I'm trying to help a customer setup their email to use the New Outlook on a Windows 11 computer.

They have their main account

mike@DOMAINNAME.f9.co.uk

And a secondary mailbox created from within the above account.

jane@DOMAINNAME.f9.co.uk

Both of these work great via Webmail

I've been reading the PlusNet docs etc but I'm a little confused about what server and port settings I need.

Now up until last Thursday 10th / Friday 11th the New Outlook had been working great for jane@DOMAINNAME.f9.co.uk.Now all of a sudden no new emails are received or sent via New Outlook (Webmail works fine). There are no errors.

For their reference, these are the settings that were working correctly until last week:

Previously Working IMAP Settings (Incoming Mail)

Hostname: imap.force9.net
Port: 993
Secure connection type: None

Previously Working SMTP Settings (Outgoing Mail)

Hostname: relay.force9.net
Port: 587
Secure connection type: None

Have these changed recently?
Is there any known issue?
Do we use jane@DOMAINNAME.f9.co.uk as the user and the webmail password as the password.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Re: Help with New Outlook and Force9

Townman — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 17:17:13 GMT

There is an interim issue at the moment, which is complicated by being on the network, or not on the network.

Webmail is on the network, so the experience might be different using an email client which is not connected to the Plusnet network. These are the key considerations...

DEFAULT mailbox account@account.force9.co.uk (or f9)
SECONDARY mailbox
- mike@account.forec9.co.uk
- wife.jane@account.force9.co.uk

With webmail and on network all of the above will connect and authenticate using the email address.

Off network

all is fine for the DEFAULT mailbox
secondary mailboxes MUST use the account+mailbox form of the userID
as present a.b@ mailboxes cannot establish a SMTP connection

Work to resolve secondary mailbox authentication using email address is WIP - inbound is fixed.

Note the server settings above - IMAP port 993 is secure - use TLS/SSL encryption. For the SMTP server use STARTTLS

Re: Help with New Outlook and Force9

flubber — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 17:27:49 GMT

Thank you @Townman for that excellent and helpful reply.

So from I understand is that I need to use this as the username when authenticating

DOMAINNAME+jane

rather than use the existing username

jane@DOMAINNAME.f9.co.uk

When I do the following

curl.exe -v imaps://imap.force9.net -u DOMAINNAME+jane
curl.exe -v smtp://relay.force9.net:587 -u DOMAINNAME+jane --ssl-reqd

Both pass.

The issue I have is that the NEW Outlook does not let you change the authenticating username. It uses the email jane@DOMAINNAME.f9.co.uk for the username and you can't override that.

Are we saying that using DOMAINNAME+janeis just a short term fix until the issue is resolved.

Re: Help with New Outlook and Force9

Townman — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 17:31:13 GMT

You have got all of that correct.

Looks like you have found the server connection diagnostics useful!!

New Outlook will let you modify the userID (I am sure I have done it) but it is tricky. I am about to go out, so do not have time right now. If the user is not "wedded" to New Outlook, consider Thunderbird or EM Client ... I am fairly taken with the latter, but I have the full version of Outlook, which is a tad essential to me.

Re: Help with New Outlook and Force9

flubber — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 17:45:22 GMT

Thanks again for your time and knowledge @Townman

My customer is an elderly couple and think Thunderbird/EM might be a bit jarring for them

I use EM myself.

I'm struggling to find where you change the username but I'll keep digging. If you do find out where please let me know. No rush on this as I'm not visiting my customer until next week.