Using Vista and Outlook 2007. Presently using a non-secure wi-fi connection in an RV park. I can surf the internet and receive emails, but can’t send them. What gives?
Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, and other dedicated e-mail applications (but not web-browser-based e-mail) use different protocols for receiving and sending e-mail. Sometimes one protocol but not the other will be accessible through a given means of connecting with the Internet. (Forv example, AT&T will allow me to send using my BellSouth account but rejects one I have on a particular domain where I’m hosted; I have to use Firefox to send mail using that domain e-mail address.)
I expect you need to set your mail client to authenticate before sending - it’s not always necessary when you’re on your home internet connection, especially if your internet connection provider is also your mail hosting company, but when you’re accessing the mail server from a different network, it wants to make sure you are who you say you are (to avoid any and every spammer relaying outgoing mail via the server.
Look for an option 'my server requires authentication somewhere in the mailbox properties or tools/options. There should be another checkbox saying something like ‘use the same credentials as for incoming mail’.
Is this your usual connection, or a temporary one while you’re staying at that park?
I ask this because I’ve run into the situation at hotels where the hotel connection blocks the SMTP port (which is the outgoing mail port for programs like Outlook). When I ask, the explaination given (other than “I don’t know”) is usually that this is so that someone can’t use their wireless connection to send outgoing spam.
The last time this happened to me (a couple of weeks ago in a hotel in Lake Placid), the hotel manager gave me a number to call where a nice tech person at their service provider asked for my name and what hotel and room I was staying in, then gave me a temporary workaround to use while I was staying at the hotel.
(For the mail savvy, the temporary workaround was a mail server, userid and passwoord to use as the outgoing mail server for my Outlook account while we were staying at the hotel. Apparantly their service doesn’t block SMTP requests to that particular mail server. That temporary combo stopped working a couple of days after we left the hotel, so I had to know how to revert to my original Outlook setup.)
IIRC, there can also be an issue with port numbers. SMTP for outgoing mail can be transmitted over a few of them and often some are blocked. I think 110 and 587 are often used but there could be others. The only way to know is to find someone to ask. That is part of the send mail setup in Outlook. As a workaround, you can use www.mail2web.com which should let you send messages through your account using your user name and password. You could even use it for all your e-mail needs if you choose to. It is just as secure as any other e-mail client and you can use it on demand. I had to do that a few months ago for a similar issue.
SMTP is port 25. POP3 - used for receiving mail - is 110. If more ISPs blocked port 25 then spam would be much reduced.
-Authentification
-Port numbers changed by server
My carrier changed the protocol for my email so I had to change the settings.
That aside, my version of Outlook Express eventually died on my laptop never to be resuscitated. MS doesn’t support it anymore so I downloaded their free version of Live Mail. It will destroy your inbox if you switch over or make it really hard to find so forward any messages you wish to save to another account and then shut it down if you go this route.
I’ve been using wi-fi connections throughout our travels and have yet to run into this problem. Sounds to me like they are blocking outgoing email, but this is a small mom-and-pop operation and they don’t seem to have that sort of savvy. The son that I talked to seemed computer-smart, but was mystified.
Seriously, try www.mail2web.com if you really need to get a message out. I certainly don’t work for them but it is a tried and true method for these types of problems. You may have to cut and paste text from your old Outlook messages that you are responding to but it should work anywhere.