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Switching PN from BT and email situation.

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fred77
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Registered: ‎04-11-2017

Switching PN from BT and email situation.

Me again!,

 

Due to switch to PN on the 8th December. Currently have my domain name with UK2 Net. My email address using my domain name and wife's are forwarded to BT from UK2Net and has always worked fine. I will have to provide a Plusnet forwarding address to get our emails forwarded. When will I be able to setup my Plusnet email address to enable me to do this? Presumably I can't do it before the changeover? Just want a seamless changeover.

 

Many thanks,

 

John

11 REPLIES 11
Strat
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Re: Switching PN from BT and email situation.

Moderator's note by Dick (Strat) Topic moved to Email board for better visibility.

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Townman
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Re: Switching PN from BT and email situation.

Hi John,

You can set up your Plusnet email addresses now and receive email sent to them via an IMAP (preferred?) or POP3 connected email client or use Plusnet email.

What you cannot do until your account is activated is to SEND emails via the Plusnet SMTP relay server.

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

fred77
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Registered: ‎04-11-2017

Re: Switching PN from BT and email situation.

Thank you for trying to help. Unfortunately I find setting up new emai addresses a "black art" and would like some clear instructions please. I have looked at the relevant page on Plusnet's site but it still isn't clear, to me. Do I just make up my own email address using my member login name as per....john@memberlogin.plus.com and use my Plusnet password? If so, and this is the bit I can't quite fathom, where do I input these details on the Plusnet site. Or don't I? I assumed Plusnet would "allocate" me an email number and store it on there server or whatever for it to be usable. As you can see I am somewhat confused!!

Hope you can help and if so I am very grateful.

 

John

spraxyt
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Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Switching PN from BT and email situation.

Hi John, Setting up your first Plusnet email address requires you to login to the Broadband Member Centre via www.plus.net  (https://www.plus.net/index_portal.html is a direct link to the login page). Then go to Email settings in the left hand menu and click the Manage My Mail icon in the centre of the page.

On your first visit you should be shown a special dialogue asking you to provide a name for your default mailbox (as you surmised this might be "john" for the email address john@memberlogin.plus.com). Follow the dialogue through to completion and system work to set up your email should commence. You will be advised this might take up to four hours.

Once that completes you will be able to receive mail on that address. However until your broadband goes live you can send only using webmail. Login details for that (default) mailbox are username = memberlogin with password = memberlogin-password.

Once the first mailbox has completed set up you can create additional mailboxes if you wish, for example one called wifename which goes with an email address wifename@memberlogin.plus.com. To do this go into Manage My Mail, click the Create New Email Address button and follow the instructions. These will include specifying a password for this mailbox. Setting it up should take no more than 30 minutes.

For additional mailboxes like this one login details are slightly different, username = memberlogin+wifename (including the + sign) and password = what was set when the mailbox was created.

For reference the incoming server name will be imap.plus.net assuming you use the recommended IMAP protocol; the outgoing server will be relay.plus.net and using port 587 is recommended. At the moment you need no-SSL. Authentication is essential for sending when not on a Plusnet connection but you won't be able to use that until your broadband goes live. Until then you could use your existing provider's relay server.

Hope that helps.

David
fred77
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Re: Switching PN from BT and email situation.

Thank you David for taking the time to give such  clear instructions. However, after following these and opening up the mail icon page I am presented with this, and nothing else.....

Add a new mailbox

Setup as many mailboxes as you want here - one for home, work or family, each with an individual password. Each mailbox can then be logged into, to send and receive email privately and securely. Find out more.

 

New Mailbox name:   @yourdomain.co.uk

 

The mailbox name must be a minimum of 1 character long and a maximum of 45 characters. This can be made up of letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), dots, underscores and hyphens.

Note: if you have a domain hosted on your account any aliases, mailboxes, redirects or mailing lists you add will be automatically associated with your domain names.

 
Nowhere am I asked to setup a default email. This page seems to only allow the setting up of additional mailboxes, or am I completely confused? If not then perhaps PN have not yet got things in place for me to set up my default email address.
Have I got this wrong? Your advice is appreciated.
 
Many thanks,
 
John
Townman
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Re: Switching PN from BT and email situation.

John,

You can set up whatever you want.  If you want a default address for whatever purpose, then set one up called "admin" or "postmaster" (as you please) using the account password.

Then set up john@ and wife@ (etc) these can have their own passwords.

Sorry if this is a little fuzzy, for Plusnet changed sometime ago the initial setting up of email addresses - there are now none of a new account.

One point of note - I recommend that BEFORE connecting a client to the new email address, log in to the new email address using the webmail interface.  This will set up the default folders using "proper" names rather than the random variations used by different email clients.

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

fred77
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Registered: ‎04-11-2017

Re: Switching PN from BT and email situation.

Hi David,

 

I can report that I have setup a default email address for Plusnet!!  I had misunderstood the email setup page as you probably realised and after inserting my name in the box it opened up another page giving me further access. 

I use a registered domain name, hosted by UK2Net, as my normal email address and have done so for years, with mail to that address being forwarded to BT using my BT email address.  Obviously I need the same to happen when my Plusnet account goes live, on the 8th December. Presumably all that will happen is that once that occurs I will have to change my forwarding address at UK2Net to my default Plusnet address. Does that make sense? I had thought that as I now had a default Plusnet address that I could set that up now but I have tried and it doesn't work.

 

Many thanks again,

 

John

 

 

Stoker
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Registered: ‎12-08-2012

Re: Switching PN from BT and email situation.

I'm about to help a friend with a similar migration. Plusnet's setup instructions say "SMTP Authentication - Yes (only needed if you're sending emails from a non-Plusnet Internet connection)".

So surely you should be able to send via relay.plus.net from a non-Plusnet network if you configure the same authentication as receiving?

 

Townman
Superuser
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Re: Switching PN from BT and email situation.

Correct.

 

That wording would read better saying something along the lines of "not essential if you only ever send emails when connected to the PlusNET network".

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

spraxyt
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Re: Switching PN from BT and email situation.

Fix

Hi John, sorry haven't had chance to return here until now.

Clearly my reference to being asked to set up a default mailbox on the first Manage My Mail page isn't the correct phrase.. However having progressed through the dialogue you achieved that. Smiley

As I mentioned it takes up to 4 hours to complete set up of the first mailbox. Most of that is actually waiting for a special MX (Mail Exchange) record to be set up in the DNS (Domain Name System) "Internet address book" so that email servers elsewhere know where to send messages addressed to you. After that the updated DNS entry has to propagate to other DNS servers. This can take up to 24 hours and until that completes servers elsewhere will report "unknown address". I think that's what you would be seeing with your attempt to redirect your domain address to your Plusnet one.

If you try again now propagation might have completed so that it works. You could try sending a message directly from your BT address to your Plusnet one to check how things are going.

As Kevin @Townman advised I suggest logging into Webmail (https://webmail.plus.net) to ensure that default folders are set up with their correct names. For your default mailbox that will require your memberlogin username and password. First time in webmail you will be asked to set up an identity (your preferred email address). This can either be your Plusnet address or your domain address as you wish. It's possible to add alternative identities later and change the default one.

David
fred77
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Registered: ‎04-11-2017

Re: Switching PN from BT and email situation.

Thanks to all who helped, as it appears that my new PN email address is now working as a forwarding address with UK2Net. Your explanation David was especially helpful in giving me a better insight to the mysteries of setting up and using email addresses. Again many thanks.

 

John