Using email at more than one location
sequoiak
Chill, be happy, don't worry
We all have multiple e-mails with different suppliers and ISPs we used to have accounts with
I have my own domain and Freedom to Surf, Plusnet, Gmail and Yahoo.
Most clients are relatively user friendly and setting up to receive from multiple e-mail sources is IMHO a doddle (you will find plenty of guides right here on the Plusnet portal for all the main clients. Put your client in the search window on the portal home page or any other page)
But sending whooooooo thats the issue
Chill, be happy, don't worry
We all have multiple e-mails with different suppliers and ISPs we used to have accounts with
I have my own domain and Freedom to Surf, Plusnet, Gmail and Yahoo.
Most clients are relatively user friendly and setting up to receive from multiple e-mail sources is IMHO a doddle (you will find plenty of guides right here on the Plusnet portal for all the main clients. Put your client in the search window on the portal home page or any other page)
But sending whooooooo thats the issue
Hi sequoiak,
I thought the diagrams showing separate receiving and sending servers were relevant but I think you've grasped that anyway. Those diagrams also mention ports - 110 for incoming emails and 25 for outgoing emails - and I will refer to the latter later.
Windows Mail is the standard email program (client) that comes with Windows Vista; my suggestion is to stick with it - when I used it for a while I felt Windows Live Mail was over complex for a basic user.
Lots of questions in that paragraph which are difficult to answer in isolation. Do you use a Plusnet email address as well as your Virgin one? And do you have only the one Virgin address?
Plusnet provide guides for setting up Windows Mail. These can be accessed from Help Page Email Setup Guides and (for Windows Mail) comprise Email setup guide, Check and change settings and Send email from any connection. If you do set up authentication "any connection" includes a Plusnet one so there is no need to remove it when at home.
With authentication you should be able to send when connected on your friend's broadband. However as you've already discovered the problem comes when you connect via Three - even with authentication you are still unable to send emails via Plusnet. This arises because Three do not allow port 25 (that number again) connections to a third-party (eg Plusnet) send-mail server. More follows the quote ...
Continuing ... Three insist you use their server and I expect the technician probably got you to use smtp-mbb.three.co.uk as your outgoing mail server.
Hopefully reaching the home straight now ...
I would be inclined to avoid Hotmail - I don't think you need it as long as you are comfortable making small changes to email settings when you use your Three dongle and when you don't.
I think the key to telling your computer which email settings to use for collecting and sending emails lies in the settings tick-box marked in the attachment. Set up two email accounts in Windows Mail, both collecting from Virgin* but one sending via Plusnet (with authentication) and one sending via Three. I think if you remove the tick marked on the attachment from the Three account then that will lie dormant and just the Plusnet one will function when a 'get and send mail' cycle is processed. Now if you connect via Three - edit the settings to remove the tick from the Plusnet settings and tick that on Three. The Three one should now function when a 'get and send mail' cycle is processed.
Hope that makes sense to you. I haven't done that sort of thing using Windows Mail, though have using Outlook - and it worked for me.
Before long I'm hopeful that Plusnet email developments hinted at in other posts will eliminate even the need to do this connection-dependent edit.
David
* As PeterLoftus mentioned most ISPs will let you collect email from anywhere, the difficulty is always trying to send it.
Quote from: sequoiak I had already looked at “Howstuffworks”, but that didn't really address my questions at all, as I am only concerned about how to make the connections from my computer to the servers of several ISPs.
I thought the diagrams showing separate receiving and sending servers were relevant but I think you've grasped that anyway. Those diagrams also mention ports - 110 for incoming emails and 25 for outgoing emails - and I will refer to the latter later.
Quote from: sequoiak From your second paragraph I now understand where ISPs come into the process of sending/receiving emails via Windows Mail. (I am using Mail in Vista. Should I change to Windows Live Mail?)
Windows Mail is the standard email program (client) that comes with Windows Vista; my suggestion is to stick with it - when I used it for a while I felt Windows Live Mail was over complex for a basic user.
Quote from: sequoiak From your fourth paragraph, I now understand the role of virgin in my incoming emails I still need to sort out whether I only need to set up Windows Mail in one place to look at the virgin server for incoming emails, regardless of the ISP I am using (If so, where is this?), or do I need to set something for each ISP in order to do this. (Again, where do I set this up?) I have noticed that when I am receiving emails, several email addresses are listed, and “executed” in turn, but I don't know what I did to get this to happen, or whether I have virgin listed separately for each ISP.
Lots of questions in that paragraph which are difficult to answer in isolation. Do you use a Plusnet email address as well as your Virgin one? And do you have only the one Virgin address?
Quote from: sequoiak Your fifth paragraph – this may be what I need. I shall pursue this, but will need a little time.
Plusnet provide guides for setting up Windows Mail. These can be accessed from Help Page Email Setup Guides and (for Windows Mail) comprise Email setup guide, Check and change settings and Send email from any connection. If you do set up authentication "any connection" includes a Plusnet one so there is no need to remove it when at home.
With authentication you should be able to send when connected on your friend's broadband. However as you've already discovered the problem comes when you connect via Three - even with authentication you are still unable to send emails via Plusnet. This arises because Three do not allow port 25 (that number again) connections to a third-party (eg Plusnet) send-mail server. More follows the quote ...
Quote from: sequoiak Paragraph 6 – I am using Windows Mail for all three ISPs. I could not find anything whatsoever on the “three” website about setting up email, so telephoned them. After 50 minutes their technician managed to get email via my three dongle to work, but only after deleting all my other email ISP settings, so now I shall have to set them up again.
Continuing ... Three insist you use their server and I expect the technician probably got you to use smtp-mbb.three.co.uk as your outgoing mail server.
Quote from: sequoiak Should I change to just Hotmail plus Windows Live Mail, so I can send and receive emails via any ISP? I think I have read that I can save Hotmails within Windows Live Mail.
Then, how do I tell my computer which ISP to use to connect to the internet in each location?
Hopefully reaching the home straight now ...
I would be inclined to avoid Hotmail - I don't think you need it as long as you are comfortable making small changes to email settings when you use your Three dongle and when you don't.
I think the key to telling your computer which email settings to use for collecting and sending emails lies in the settings tick-box marked in the attachment. Set up two email accounts in Windows Mail, both collecting from Virgin* but one sending via Plusnet (with authentication) and one sending via Three. I think if you remove the tick marked on the attachment from the Three account then that will lie dormant and just the Plusnet one will function when a 'get and send mail' cycle is processed. Now if you connect via Three - edit the settings to remove the tick from the Plusnet settings and tick that on Three. The Three one should now function when a 'get and send mail' cycle is processed.
Hope that makes sense to you. I haven't done that sort of thing using Windows Mail, though have using Outlook - and it worked for me.
Before long I'm hopeful that Plusnet email developments hinted at in other posts will eliminate even the need to do this connection-dependent edit.
David
* As PeterLoftus mentioned most ISPs will let you collect email from anywhere, the difficulty is always trying to send it.
Hi,
Email on the go used to be easier when mail relays were effectively open - until the need to lock everything down came about to make spamming and virus distribution activities less easy.
Where people reply to depends entirely on what you put in the "E-mail address" box when you created the account you are sending from. That address need not be the one related to the ISP whose sendmail server you are using (that's not always true but is for the ISPs mentioned in this thread (when 3's is the smtp-mbb variant).
Though the Virgin address is your main email address obviously mail could be addressed to your Plusnet and 3 addresses. What have you done previously for picking those up?
Well during sign-up Plusnet give users the option *not* to create an email address - but some users then complain in the forum (and probably call in) about their email not working. I suspect most users are probably happier to associate email address and ISP and change if they move. Help pages are intended to be easy to follow and building on that association meets that requirement. Setting up email proves troublesome for some users so keeping it simple is very desirable.
Email programs often set the account name to that of the incoming mail server when the account is first created. If the account is edited later that 'association' might no longer apply. I always change the name to suit my requirements, it serves no purpose other than as a label in the accounts list. Having "mail.plus.net (2)" suggests to me at the time you created that you already had "mail.plus.net" and "mail.plus.net (1)" accounts defined. I'd look at the message headers to check where it was sent to (and how it got there) - but of course I'm familiar with mail headers..
I doubt Virgin would allow their mail relay to be used if you were not on a Virgin connection (though that needn't be your own, could be a friend's).
The E-mail Address field is set as the "From" address, and when left empty the Reply Address is (effectively) set to the same. Normally that is what people want to happen. However a different Reply Address could be given if desired and replies would go there. As an example this might be used when jsmith@example.com answers a customer query but replies are to go to sales@example.com so that another agent can pick it up if appropriate.
The option has been there for some time but only relatively recently became "official" and covered in the documentation. There were concerns it might need to be withdrawn if problems occurred.
Edit: Re the phrase highlighted in bold. Perhaps this is playing with words but you don't actually send emails on other ISPs. You still send it via Plusnet, but use authentication to verify your identity because the path to their server is not controlled by Plusnet. Let's be generous and assume the agent thought you meant using the TalkTalk mail server.
As I mentioned previously I hope email developments will soon make needing to change settings when using the 3 dongle unnecessary.
David
Email on the go used to be easier when mail relays were effectively open - until the need to lock everything down came about to make spamming and virus distribution activities less easy.
Quote from: sequoiak Incoming email via virgin - I only have one virgin email address, and that is the only email address I give to people to email me. I do have a "plusnet" email address and a "three" email address, which I suppose are used by anyone replying to one of my outgoing emails.
Where people reply to depends entirely on what you put in the "E-mail address" box when you created the account you are sending from. That address need not be the one related to the ISP whose sendmail server you are using (that's not always true but is for the ISPs mentioned in this thread (when 3's is the smtp-mbb variant).
Though the Virgin address is your main email address obviously mail could be addressed to your Plusnet and 3 addresses. What have you done previously for picking those up?
Quote from: sequoiak I don't remember seeing any explanation on either plusnet, talktalk, or three websites, of being able to use a previous email address for incoming emails (In my case virgin.) instead of setting up a new account.
Well during sign-up Plusnet give users the option *not* to create an email address - but some users then complain in the forum (and probably call in) about their email not working. I suspect most users are probably happier to associate email address and ISP and change if they move. Help pages are intended to be easy to follow and building on that association meets that requirement. Setting up email proves troublesome for some users so keeping it simple is very desirable.
Quote from: sequoiak Looking at my Inbox, most historic emails show the Account as "mail.virgin.net", some show "plusnet", some show "mail.plus.net (2)" For emails I have received today, the Account is shown as my "three" account, even though I haven't put the dongle into the USB port since yesterday, and as far as I was aware, have been using my plusnet land-line connection.
Email programs often set the account name to that of the incoming mail server when the account is first created. If the account is edited later that 'association' might no longer apply. I always change the name to suit my requirements, it serves no purpose other than as a label in the accounts list. Having "mail.plus.net (2)" suggests to me at the time you created that you already had "mail.plus.net" and "mail.plus.net (1)" accounts defined. I'd look at the message headers to check where it was sent to (and how it got there) - but of course I'm familiar with mail headers..
Quote from: sequoiak Sent Items - I have not sent any emails today. In Sep + Oct + Nov, I sent three emails, and replied to eight emails. Nine of these show the account as mail.virgin.net, and two show "plusnet" Does this mean I am still able to SEND emails via virgin?
I doubt Virgin would allow their mail relay to be used if you were not on a Virgin connection (though that needn't be your own, could be a friend's).
Quote from: sequoiak I have read in a "Help" somewhere (I think, in the plusnet "Help") that in the Windows Mail/Tools/Accounts/properties/General window, the E-mail address is the address to which incoming emails will be sent. However the next box down is labelled "Reply Address". The email "Help" does not even mention these boxes. I am confused.
The E-mail Address field is set as the "From" address, and when left empty the Reply Address is (effectively) set to the same. Normally that is what people want to happen. However a different Reply Address could be given if desired and replies would go there. As an example this might be used when jsmith@example.com answers a customer query but replies are to go to sales@example.com so that another agent can pick it up if appropriate.
Quote from: sequoiak Authentication - I have set this up, and will test it next time i am using the internet at a friend's house. I have asked plusnet callcentre staff on at least three occasions whether I could send emails on other ISPs, and have been told each time that this is not possible, unless I pay to have my account transfered to another phone line, and then pay to have it restored, each time.
The option has been there for some time but only relatively recently became "official" and covered in the documentation. There were concerns it might need to be withdrawn if problems occurred.
Edit: Re the phrase highlighted in bold. Perhaps this is playing with words but you don't actually send emails on other ISPs. You still send it via Plusnet, but use authentication to verify your identity because the path to their server is not controlled by Plusnet. Let's be generous and assume the agent thought you meant using the TalkTalk mail server.
As I mentioned previously I hope email developments will soon make needing to change settings when using the 3 dongle unnecessary.
David
