Michelle said:
while working at home I am wireless on my home (unsecure) network. All
incoming and outgoing mail work seamlessly. However, when I leave home
and
work on a different wireless network (an unsecure network within the
building), my windows mail account cannot connect to receive or send.
Internet access is available and I am able to search the web... just cant
seem to connect to my e-mail account. I'm going on vacation in a week and
need to fix this issue. How do I fix this?
First, the security levels of the networks, or whether they are wired or
wireless, don't really matter to whether you can connect to POP/SMTP mail
servers or not.
Second, contact your ISP or mail provider and see if they have
fully-qualified names for their servers, and alternate port numbers for
accessing them - in particular, for the outgoing mail server. For example,
they may have SMTP access on port 587.
Your current outgoing SMTP server is likely on Port 25, and an increasing
number of ISPs do not allow connections to mail servers via Port 25 unless
it's *their* server. This blocking is done to prevent spam mail relays.
Without these changes, you should be able to receive mail without
difficulty, just not send.
If your mail provider can't do this, all is not lost. Create a gmail
account, and follow the quite helpful and detailed directions Google
provides to enable POP/SMTP services. Next use the directions to send mail
as another user - this requires replying to a confirmation mail from your
new gmail account.
Then, change your sending server to the gMail SMTP server, with the correct
port numbers, and with the correct names and reply-to addresses. Once
this is all done, mail that you send or reply to will appear with your
original email address.
However, in some cases, such as the Mac email client Entourage, your
replies will apear as from "(e-mail address removed) ON BEHALF OF (e-mail address removed)".
In addition, note that copies of your sent mail will be saved on the gmail
servers. This can be an issue if the mail is on behalf of your employer;
if it is, you should check.
Otherwise, this arrangement works very well, takes about half an hour or
less to set up, has no other costs, and works pretty much anywhere in the
world.
HTH
-pk
