outlook question.

[kjames]

a quick question to all those techie types out there.

I use outlook for my diary, email etc, and run it on my laptop. now when i connect wirelessly at home, i can send and recieve emails and everythings dandy.

when i connect at work or anywhere else for that matter i can recieve emails but not send them..

cant remember the exact message, but it doesnt find my SMTP server. i've checked the settings in the email accounts setting box and all appears fine.

internet all works, and i'm recieving emails so i'm defo connected. My provider at home is wanadoo and anywhere else it is whatever provider is available.

thanks in advance

karl

[TSM]

Its most likley that your work blocks the outgoing SMTP ports to the net, well i do at my office. Its not needed when the company has an internal network & limits virus activity if it gets on your network ( for viruses that have their own SMTP engine & bypass outlook).

I think its that because you say it cannot find the SMTP server, if it gave a error message along the lines of relaying, unknown host etc... then i would say that it was because you are trying to connect to the SMTP host of another ISP which normaly is not allowed.

Talk to your IT dept and see if they have another SMTP server you can setup. I would create two accounts in Outlook, 1 for home & office. Set only 1 to receive your email and both to send, with a prefrence to send via the wanadoo servers. The second would be set to manual sending. That way when you create an email you select in the message what account you want to send the email through.

It can be confusing, but i have about 10 accouns on my computer for various things.

[kjames]

thanks for the advice, i'll have a word with IT guy on monday... not holding out much hope as he's a tad 'special needs'

I think he's the love child of one of the partners and the accounts manager... thats the only reason i can think of why he would still be employed :D

k

[TSM]

you can easly check if the SMTP port 25 is blocked.
Start > RUN > telnet mail.bbc.co.uk 25

You should see something like:
220 gateg.kw.bbc.co.uk ESMTP Sendmail 8.11.2/8.11.2; Sat, 18 Feb 2006 12:03:34 GMT

If you see it then the port is open, if not then its closed.

If its open you could try finding out the ISP that you are with.

Goto www.dnstools.com, it should show your company ip address, click on it and it will give you a Whois output on who owns the IP address and what ISP its connected to.

With that info you may be able to find out what you ISPs SMTP server is.

Usaly they are things like:
mail.ISP.com
smtp.ISP.com
mailhost.ISP.com

[kjames]

thanks much appreciated..

i'll give it a go on monday... looks very advanced stuff for me. but hey tinkering is fun

k

[timwilky]

One of the sites I visit blocks SMTP. So I got round it by enabling SMTP on an additional port of 10025 on my mail server, that way when I use my outlook client I can send personal mail from the office.

Strange way to run a firewall, they explicitly block certain services, rather than explicitly enable certain services. But as it is a branch office they probably take the view that they don't want to interfeer with site to site traffic, but simply don't want personal SMTP on their LAN.

Bit daft, I could understand blocking POP3/IMAP etc as you would probably not want to enable receipt of mail that has not gone through your corporate servers for anti virus etc. But to restrict outgoing makes little sense.

[TSM]

Bit daft, I could understand blocking POP3/IMAP etc as you would probably not want to enable receipt of mail that has not gone through your corporate servers for anti virus etc. But to restrict outgoing makes little sense.

If you think about it from a diffrent point, what ever gets sent from the company will show their IP. Virus sending out rubish could blacklist the company IP causing huge problems and also possably bring a legal issue for what has been sent from the company. Its more about liability IMO.

I block all services and only allow HTTP80/HTTPS443 going out of the company workstations, DNS/POP/SMTP is all handled by the company servers and you cant send email through the servers unless the from address is a valid registed company email.

[The Mass]

You may also want to check your outlook profiles.

If the profiles have been setup for outbound / inbound SMTP servers going through your ISP , when you get to work, the profile will not work.


I think you'll probably find that your compnay isn't blocking SMTP or POP3 for that matter, as they pretty much depend on it for all inbound mail traffic.

The other factor may also be your anti-virus software, if it's McAfee's EPO stuff, then SMTP can be blocked by the administrator. But you would probably find that your outbound / inbound controls wouldn't work at home either.

I would have a quick look at your outlook profiles first :wink:

Mass

[wheelnut]

It can be confusing, but i have about 10 accouns on my computer for various things.

It was that bit that intrigued me the most :P

[kjames]

thanks for the advice... i did the check to see if the port was open as described by TSM... and it is.

then did the dnstools thing... but it didnt list anything about smtp servers. its an AOL account we have ??

anyway, now i'm stuck again. I havent managed to follow the bit about outlook profiles... which menu is this? is this the same as email account settings?

karl

You may also want to check your outlook profiles.

If the profiles have been setup for outbound / inbound SMTP servers going through your ISP , when you get to work, the profile will not work.


I think you'll probably find that your compnay isn't blocking SMTP or POP3 for that matter, as they pretty much depend on it for all inbound mail traffic.

The other factor may also be your anti-virus software, if it's McAfee's EPO stuff, then SMTP can be blocked by the administrator. But you would probably find that your outbound / inbound controls wouldn't work at home either.

I would have a quick look at your outlook profiles first :wink:

Mass

[TSM]

Its very odd that a company would be using AOL as its ISP as they are rubish.

But if it is AOL you will need to change your SMTP server, but it will probably still not work because of a restriction that AOL has, read the Quote below.
AOL SMTP server: smtp.aol.com / smtp.uk.aol.com

http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/imap/

AOL's SMTP server does not permit use of a "From" email address other than the appropriate AOL Screen Name's. An attempt to use any other From address will cause the Send attempt to fail with an authentication error. Note that because of this, one should not use smtp.aol.com with a third-party email account. Better to use some other SMTP server (or the AOL SMTP proxy...whichever is working that day). For more information, see Non-AOL Email Accounts.


You could also bypass all email servers and send email directly to the other persons server by installing a local SMTP server on your computer. You would then set your SMTP server IP to 127.0.0.1.

There are free progs to do this.

http://www.softaward.com/1036.html
http://www.qksoft.com/qk-smtp-server/

[kjames]

Its very odd that a company would be using AOL as its ISP as they are rubish.

But if it is AOL you will need to change your SMTP server, but it will probably still not work because of a restriction that AOL has, read the Quote below.
AOL SMTP server: smtp.aol.com / smtp.uk.aol.com

http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/imap/

AOL's SMTP server does not permit use of a "From" email address other than the appropriate AOL Screen Name's. An attempt to use any other From address will cause the Send attempt to fail with an authentication error. Note that because of this, one should not use smtp.aol.com with a third-party email account. Better to use some other SMTP server (or the AOL SMTP proxy...whichever is working that day). For more information, see Non-AOL Email Accounts.



You could also bypass all email servers and send email directly to the other persons server by installing a local SMTP server on your computer. You would then set your SMTP server IP to 127.0.0.1.

There are free progs to do this.

NOTE - REMOVED FOR SECURITY REASONS


actually i might of told you a complete lie and its demon?.. above is the whoisit report.

k

[TSM]

The SMTP server for Demon is: post.demon.co.uk

[BillyC]

Sounds like classic SMTP blocking, rather standard for any company firewall.

I'm sure Ricardo will baffle you with extended explanation ;)

[kjames]

some IT magic has taken place and it works... brill

thanks for your help


karl

[TSM]

Sounds like classic SMTP blocking, rather standard for any company firewall.

If you look on the posts above we tested for corporate blocking with an external SMTP server and it was working fine.

[kjames]

thanks for removing the whoisit information.. not knowing what it means i was a little uneasy posting it.

k