I was using a dial-up connection. Now I have a cable modem, though I still have my dial-up ISP account because I can’t be bothered to change my email address and send out notifications.
When using the dial-up (which is not an option at the moment) I can send and receive mail using the Mail application in OS X 10.4.6 Tiger. With cable, I can recevice but not send. (I can send online with Web Mail.) I think the reason I can’t send is because Mac Mail is set up to use the dial-up smtp setting.
What do I need to change to be able to send mail using Mac Mail with my regular address?
(I’ve tried Earthlink Support. They cannot answer the question via email and offered Live Chat. Only the chat session has been ‘starting’ for ten minutes already.)
Your cable modem provider has probably given you a specific smtp server you’re supposed to use when on their network. Often they will block access to anybody else’s smtp server so you have to use theirs.
In Mail, go to Preferences > Accounts. Choose the account you’re using from the list, then click on “Account Information”. Down at the bottom is a popup button labelled “Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP)”. I imagine this still shows the smtp server of your dial-up ISP. You want to change this to be the smtp server of your cable modem company. Click on that popup button and at the bottom is an “Add Server” choice; a panel will pop up where you can specify the name or address of the cable modem smtp server. Then make sure that one is the one that’s selected on the popup, and you should be good to go.
EarthLink has instructions for setting up Mail to use their SMTP server. It sounds like you want to send through EarthLink’s SMTP server but use your old ISP’s email address. In that case, the incoming mail server will be your old ISP, but outgoing mail will go through EarthLink.