Sickles Insight

Though this article appears technical, I promise that even the least of technology educated persons can follow along and gain value! If you can check your email, you can follow along in this article!Many find themselves given an email address from their university, college, highschool, place of work, or religious affiliation; unfortunately, often times along with this email address comes a poor mechanism for keeping up to date with receiving, sending and organizing these emails - often through some sluggish web based client. I want to share with you an easy to execute method to integrate your email (wherever it may originate) with your favorite email client - be it Outlook, Eudora, Opera, ACT!, etc. and continue to use your provided email address for both receiving and sending emails.

First, the problem: The need to write this article arose from assiting with the setup of a new office for an Aflac representative. Talking with the kind, but unhelpful support desk I found that their only solution to using the professional email domain, ‘@US.AFLAC.COM’, was to forward each rep’s email to a personal address of their choosing. The recommendations made by the support staff were “… your Comcast email, or even your AOL address.” This may appear to be a neat feature, but when you turn around to send an email back to a client, you realize that the neatness is only one way. Now everyone is receiving email from your personal and relatively unprofessional email address. Even worse, if you don’t have the method or knowledge to change the ‘reply-to-address’, any business you email will begin emailing your personal AOL address instead of emailing your business email address. In addition to the number of problems already brewing in your head, what if you change service providers? Well - frankly, you’ll lose access to your email address and all of those contacts who have saved that address as your primary contact venue. This is usually going to be a problem only to those that live or work away from the main facility that provides the email address. Take for example a student that lives off campus, a sales rep that works from their home, or any user who routinely checks their email off-site.

Now, for the solution: It is very rare that an Internet Service Provider (dialup modem, DSL, cable, broadband, AT&T, SBC, Verizon, Comcast, etc) would supply you with an internet connection but not provide you with an outgoing mail relay so that you can plug that setting into your mail program and then be able to send mail from your own computer. Alright - plain english: Your provider, lets say Comcast, allows you to send email through their server with your account with the mask of being any email address of your choosing - yes, now you are with me - this could be your Aflac email address, or that provided by your university. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the specific details on how to accomplish this in just a few minutes.

Over the last few years, more and more ISP’s have started to require their subscribers to use their SMTP server. If you can not send email using the servers of the organization that gave you the email address, you will most likely be able to use the servers provided by your Internet Service Provider.

You should contact your ISP or Network Administrator to get the name of their Outgoing Mailserver, we will need to plug that into the Outgoing Mailserver setting of your email program in just a few minutes. Many ISPs (MSN, Earthlink, Verizon, etc) do not even allow their customers to use any Outgoing Mailserver except their own.

How We Will Do It: In most situations, the origin of your email account provides a bare minimum of POP3 account access. This is a strange acronym that means you can access your email from another location and download a copy of it to a place of your choosing. There are other types of access, but for the sake of simplicity, the expectation that you will use your chosen client as the primary communication platform, and the expectation that your email account allows for POP3 (whether it be AFLAC, your university, gmail, yahoo, aol, etc) we will continue with the directions. This will allow for you to receive your email from that address straight to your computer without having to go to the web page each time you want to read your email.

How to Accomplish This: The steps are extremly simply, if they aren’t - you can leave me a comment and tell me that they aren’t!

For the purposes of this article I will demonstrate using an AFLAC email account, an SBCGlobal service provider, and Outlook 2003 as the mail client. If you differ on any of these, that’s okay - you can still follow along, just make sure you replace your information in the obvious spots!

If this is your first time setting up Oulook, it will prompt you to add an email account. If you’ve dabbled in outlook previously, you’ll need to go to

1. In Microsoft Outlook, select Tools > E-mail Accounts.

2. On the E-mail Accounts wizard window, select “Add a new e-mail account” and click Next.

I am going to select the option for a POP3 account, this is the easiest choice, and most popular.

3. For your server type, select “POP3” and click Next.

Next we are prompted for some information pertaining to the account.

4. On the Internet E-mail Settings (POP3) window, enter your information as follows:

Your Name: Jeff Sickles (Enter your first and last name – this will be seen as the “from” name when others receive your mail)

E-mail Address: jsickles@DOMAIN.com (be sure to include the ‘@’ symbol with the domain name. This is the email address that will receive the email when someone clicks reply. Make sure its right!)

User Name: jsickles@DOMAIN.com (your user name is most often your email address. If you have not been given a specific user name, make it your full email address)

Password: supersecretpassword (Your password should have been indicated to you when you received your email address)

Be sure “remember my password” is checked

Now, for the fun stuff…

 

Incoming mail server (POP3): mail.DOMAIN.com (this is the most common pattern, though it certainly may vary. Try mail followed by a dot followed by the full domain (this is the name after the @ symbol in your email address - that’s a great first guess, google searches or asking your administrator can reveal more cryptic server names) Here’s an example, Joe@foxnews.com. foxnews.com would be the domain. Get the idea?

Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.Your Internet PRovider.net (As we discussed earlier, this will be your ISP server. I’ve made a short list of ISP’s that block port 25 and in addition provided their last known SMTP address. This should lessen your work.)

NOTE: These settings should work from both onsite and at home, if you experience any trouble with these settings (be sure to test both incoming and outgoing mail)

Your screen should look like the image below. Please make sure the checkboxes and information looks correct.

 

There are more instructions after the list.

A short list of ISP’s that Block Port 25 in addition to their SMTP address:

AOL: smtp.mail.aol.com
Adelphia: mail.adelphia.net
Ameritech: mailhost.det.ameritech.net
Astound Broadband: smtp.ca.astound.net
AT&T: mailhost.att.net
AT&T Global: smtp1.attglobal.net
Bell internet highspeed (Canadian): smtp10.bellnet.ca
Bell south: mail.bellsouth.net
bigpond.com (Australian): contact service provider for Settings.
CableOne: mail.cableone.net
Charter Communications: smtp.chartermi.net
Charter.net: smtp.charter.net
CharterTN.net: mail.chartertn.net
CharterMI.net: mail.chartermi.net
Cinncinnati Bell/Fuse Dial-up: smtp.fuse.net
coax.net: smtp.west.coax.net /east / central
comcast: smtp.comcast.net
Cox: smtp.west.cox.net - smtp.central.cox.net - smtp.east.cox.net
Earthlink: smtp.earthlink.net
Etisalat (UAE): smtp.emirates.net.ae
epix: out.epix.net
erols: smtp.erols.com
Frontiernet.net: smtp.frontiernet.net
fuse: smtp.fuse.net
iquest.net: mail.iquest.net
ISP.com: mail.isp.com
Juno: smtp.juno.com
Megared (Mexico): contact service provider for Settings.
Mindspring: smtp.mindspring.com
MSN: smtp.email.msn.com
MSN.DSL: secure.smtp.email.msn.com
NEBI.com: mail.nebi.com
Netcom: smtp.ix.netcom.com
NetZero: smtp.netzero.net
OOL (Optimum Online): mail.optonline.net
Optusnet: mail.optusnet.com.au
Pacific Bell (Pacbell): mail.pacbell.net
panix.com: mailhost.panix.com
PeoplePC: smtp.peoplepc.com
Quixnet.net: smtp.quixnet.net
RCN: smtp.rcn.com
Road Runner(NYC): smtp-server.nyc.rr.com (for other states, and regions contact your Road Runner Support team)
Rogers Hi-Speed (Canadian): smtp.broadband.rogers.com
SBC: smtp.sbcglobal.net
SBC Yahoo: smtp.sbcglobal.yahoo.com
speakeasy: mail.speakeasy.net
sympatico: smtp1.sympatico.ca
The-Beach.net: mail.the-beach.net
Verio: smtp.veriomail.com
Verizon: outgoing.verizon.net
Verizon(alt): smtpout.verizon.net
Videotron: relais.videotron.ca yourlink.ca (Canadian): contact service provider for Settings.

This is an important step, do not skip over this!

5. Next you need to click on More Settings

Click on the tab labeled Outgoing Server

Check the box My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication (If you use comcast, you may be able to leave this box unchecked!!)

Logon using: (Put in your username and password you use to connect to the internet - assigned by your phone company if you have DSL)

THIS NEXT STEP IS OPTIONAL, let me explain.

When you check your mail through outlook, it looks to the email server and removes a copy of the message and puts it on your computer only. If you went to check your mail through the web later in the day, any messages already received would no longer be available for viewing. This is more of a personal choice, but you may also find it suitable for you. We can set an option to leave a copy on the server for a short period of time, so that we can easily access the email in both locations. It’s more about convenience. If you feel this isn’t necessary, skip the rest of this step. If you will find it helpful, follow these short steps.

4a. Click “More Settings.”

4b. Select the “Advanced” tab.

4c. Under Delivery, select Leave a copy of messages on the server.

4d. Now select Remove from server after 10 days.

4e. Select OK to exit that menu.

Click OK to finish in that screen

That’s it, now a message will remain for 10 days after you receive it – this allows you to check your messages from either place and still have past messages available in both locations. This will NOT remove messages from outlook.

5. Click on NEXT

6. Click FINISH.

That’s it, you should be done. You have successfully configured your outlook client to receive email from your email server.

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