Lost ability to send emails following motherboard and hard drive failure

[#1]

Long time user of legacy freenetname account and Thunderbird as my mail server. Unfortunately a motherboard failure has trashed the SSD holding all my email information going back over 20 years, and although I have been able to recover some from an old profile on another HDD I have had problems setting up a new account.

I can receive emails on my Freenetname account, but cannot send - I am repeatedly asked for the password for the outgoing server; initially this was shown as "(user name) - freenetname.co.uk", but it would not accept what I thought was  the password, and after reading the information on the thread   How to change your outgoing server on a mail client I changed the outgoing server to smtpmail.freenetname.co.uk. I still can't send, and just get the message " enter the password for 'user name' on smptmail.freenetname.co.uk." I will admit I can't remember any other password than the one I'm using for the receive side of the server

Any ideas would be gratefully received.

Shackman

 

 

 

 

[#2]

There is a typo in smptmail.freenetname.co.uk.  Have you used that in the client or just when posting here?  the p and t are the wrong way round.  ie it would be smtpmail.freenetname.co.uk.

That may not be your problem, but was the first thing that came to mind.

[#3]

PJ,

Thanks for that, but unfortunately that was my error in transposing; I did have it the right way round!

It's really driving me mad; it was bad enough losing 20 years worth of work and my address book, but I'm getting all my mail IN but can't send anything unless I use a different server/email address (which was a 'reserve').

Shackman

[#4]

Ok, great.  Do you have your port for SMTP set to 587 with STARTTLS?

[#5]

Hi,

Port is set to 587, but regret STARTTLS not understood/found within Account settings

[#6]

I think I've got Thunderbird on my other laptop, but I'm not at home at the moment.  I'll try to have a look tonight (or possibly the morning) and add some screenshots, if no-one else can offer any suggestions before, like @Townman or @MisterW 

[#7]

@Shackman205  in Account settings , you need to select Outgoing server, select the server in question and click edit.

use the connection security drop down , you should None,STARTTLS & SSL/TLS as options. Use STARTTLS

[#8]

An issue with the OUTBOUND server ought not to inhibit reading what’s there … unless Thunderbird totally inhibits configuring the account if it cannot setup the SMTP server.

If the issue persists and accessing the EXISTING email is paramount … configure the SMTP server to that of some other email service you can access. You’ll probably have issues sending using that account, but at least you’ll regain access to the 20+ year’s history on the IMAP server.

Also explore offline archives … ideally to cloud backed up file store (Dropbox or OneDrive folders). That will protect you against local file store failures.

[#9]

Switched to STARTTLS with great hopes - unfortunately now comes up with "Sending of message failed. Unable to establish a secure link with Outgoing server..............................using STARTTLS since it doesn't advertise that feature. Switch off STARTTLS for that server. So I did, but it has taken about 5 resets to do so. I then looked at the authentication method (which I had left alone up until now) and selected 'no authentication'. Low and behold I can now send emails on my freenetname account, although I will admit I don't know the ramifications of this setting.

So thanks to both you and pj for pointing me in right direction.

It is frustrating for me that having used freenetname (and before that madasafish and ntl!!) on Thunderbird for so long - well over 20 years now - that I had forgotten the basics of  the setup which I must have done at the very beginning. Hopefully I haven't compromised my security by electing for 'no authentication', but maybe it was like that to begin with.

Regards and Thanks

Shackman

[#10]

@Townman 

Thanks for that but unfortunately everything was (as far as I can gather) stored within my profile and has been lost with the SSD failure (which I thought would be safer than HDD). I have recovered some emails from 10 years ago from one profile, but address lists will not come over. I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say I should be able to recover everything from the IMAP server - as far as I was aware it was all on my desktop. I also though I had safely backed up the info to my NAS, but that turned out not to be so.

I can access 'new' emails, and thanks to @pjmarsh  and @MisterW  who pointed me in the appropriate direction I can now send from the freenetname account.

Shackman