Quick Summary : We want to send and receive emails from a 'Globaldial' POP3 account while connected to a Westnet ADSL connection. We can't send emails from the 'Globaldial' account, even using westnet's outgoing mail servers.

Hi,

I've got a bit of a puzzling situation with a guy who I help out with various 'computer stuff'.
He is a professional and takes his macbook between home and office.

• At home he uses the ISP Globaldial.
• At work, another lady uses the ISP Westnet, which is shared via an Airport Express. He connects to this.

He uses apple mail configured with his POP3 Globaldial account to send and receive email. At home this works fine, but at work he cannot send any email.

I have tried :

• Changing the outgoing mail server to mail.westnet.com.au
• Same as above but using 'Password' authentication, and using the username and password of the lady who has the Westnet account.
• Creating a new email address (guy@westnet.com.au) (using the other lady's free westnet email addresses) and adding that as a POP3 account to Mail. When his mac cannot send mail thru globaldial it asks to use the Westnet server, which doesn't work.

Nothing seems to work! The only workaround we have arrived at so far is to simply send the emails using the (new) westnet email account, and put in a 'PS Please reply to other address' note at the bottom. This is a bit of an inelegant solution.. And I know there must be a trick to doing this. It must be a common enough scenario..

Regards and Thanks

Jeremy

Not sure if this fixes your actual problem but when you create a new mail message in Mail.app there is a little pull-down button to the left of the To/CC/Subject fields. One of the options is customise. If you select this option you can then set it to include a Reply-To field, and that field can be your preferred account.

I am pretty sure that you can also set up different accounts, so that it looks like you are sending from your preferred account even though you might be sending from the other account. I think this is done from the Mail.app preferences - the Accounts tab. Someone else here might be able to explain it more elegantly than me, but I think that's the gist of the solution.

If Westnet does not support SMTP authentication (and they should) then you may be out of luck.

Does globaldial offer SMTP authentication?

Amazingly, Westnet seem to have updated this page since I looked at it the other night :

http://support.westnet.com.au/al/12/...aid=2150&bt=4n

"

iPass (Global Roaming) Mail Server
[Incoming and Outgoing - Mail / POP3 / SMTP / POST]


mailr.westnet.com.au

Username: Your full Westnet email address (e.g. username@westnet.com.au)
Password: The password that you normally use to check your Westnet email address."

Do you think using mailr.westnet.com.au as an outgoing SMTP server for the globaldial account would work?

- Jeremy

This is normal behaviour, Jeremy, and thor's on the right track.

SMTP authentication is now commonplace, it is the accepted "safe" way of preventing rogue mail programs from being attacked from outside of an ISP. To be able to send mail through an ISP's mail system, you must be connected to that ISP directly. He can still receive mail from his Globaldial account from anywhere in the world, from just about any internet connection, he just can send mail.

If he is connecting to the internet via WestNet at the office, then to send mail he would need to have his Mail program go looking for the WestNet outgoing mail server, and not the GlobalDial one.

What he would be best off doing, is to sign up for a free Google Mail gmail address, set up Mail to send mail through mail.gmail.com, and make sure that the "Reply To" setting is set to his normal Globaldial email address. Then he can truly send mail from anywhere.

(For most mail recipients, they won't see that he's using a gmail address unless they specifically have all headers displayed. If they need to reply to his mail, their mail program will make use of the "Reply-To" information instead of the "From" information and mail will be sent back from their machine directly to his Globaldial email address-box.)


Brains

Possibly.

Thanks Brains, Richbowen and Thor.

I have the details of the Westnet connection at his office and was able to sign him up with a westnet address.. (The office account has 5 free addresses). I tried (or at least thought I tried) putting the westnet outgoing mail server into the globaldial account, but it didn't work.

However, even if it did work, wouldn't it still be a problem, because he needs to send mail at home too - and he couldn't send mail through westnet when he's connected to globaldial, could he..?

Oh, I think I see what you're saying. Sign him up for a gmail account and exclusively use that to send email, but specify the reply-address as his globaldial account.
I suppose that work work, but is there a way to automatically set up thet 'reply-address' in the globaldial account so he doesn't have to type it in every time (as richbowen said)?

This is confusing!

- Jeremy

Correct. This setup is what I use myself, and it works well.

I should imagine so -- I can't give specifics as I don't use Mail (I'm a big Eudora fan) but it would be a very poor program indeed that didn't allow for a global "reply-to".

Because Gmail offer their mail accounts freely and without the restriction of SMTP Authentication (they have other safety-measures in place to stop rogue mail) it truly does provide a plug-in-anywhere solution. It would even be possible to send mail transparently to anywhere by using a free wi-fi access hotspot, as gmal's SMTP server allows connections from anywhere (that is, they don't have the you-must-be-connected-to-our-network rule that ISPs normally impose), all it wants is a valid username and password.


Brains

i have several different outgoing mail servers setup my my iBook - as well as several different email accounts - as i leech wifi from many different locations. I am still traveling after more than a year and have experienced many different such issues...

If ones does not work, apple mail gives me the option of selecting another smtp account to send from. Out of all the different ISPs i have connected to, if i know the smtp server (outgoing mail server) i can send mail from it.

You might want to double check you have added the Westnet smtp server to the list of the mail program. As indicated above, the computer will still be able to send through the globaldial account. I often find that when connected to a different 'location' it will remember the smtp server to connect to

hope this helps
c.

I can't find a way to set up a global 'reply to'. Anyone else?

cheers,
Andrew

I can't find a way of doing this

But some more ideas ...

From Mail preferences go to the composing tab. In the Addressing section there is a pull-down option for choosing which account to send new mail from. Set this as "Account of last viewed mailbox" or the account you want to send from. In the absence of a specific reply-to entry the reply will go to the account the message is sent from.

In terms of the reply-to field in a new message, this field has a memory ... you should be able to just type the first couple of letters and hit return.