Tag Archives: SMTP

How to use Gmail as your SMTP server using Outlook

This tutorial will show you how to use your free Gmail SMTP server to send emails from your personal email accounts using Outlook (this example uses Outlook 2007 but still applies in principle to the other versions of Outlook and other local email clients)

This has been prompted by the news that many Virginmedia customers have recently been informed that they will no longer be able to use their Virginmedia SMTP address to send emails other than from their Virginmedia email address. This tutorial will show you how to use your Gmail SMTP address instead


Step 1.

Open Outlook and select ‘tools’ (from the top menu) then select ‘account settings’

Open Outlook and select 'tools' (from the top menu) then select 'account settings'

Open Outlook and select ‘tools’ (from the top menu) then select ‘account settings’

Step 2.

Highlight the account you would like to modify then press ‘change’

Highlight the account you would like to modify then press 'change'

Highlight the account you would like to modify then press ‘change’

Step 3.

From the ‘internet email settings’ page, select ‘more settings’

From the 'internet email settings' page, select 'more settings'

From the ‘internet email settings’ page, select ‘more settings’

Step 4.

Fill in the information in the three boxes on the ‘general’ tab (the name you’d like to call this account can be anything, you can leave organisation blank and the reply-to addrsess is the address you’d like people to reply to)

Fill in the information in the three boxes on the 'general' tab

Fill in the information in the three boxes on the ‘general’ tab

Step 5.

On the outgoing server tab, fill in the following

  1. tick the box that says ‘my outgoing server requires authentication’,
  2. tick the ‘log on using…’ option
  3. in the ‘user name’ box, type in your full Gmail email address
  4. in the password box, type in your Gmail password (the same one you’d use to log into your Gmail account)
  5. un-tick the ‘require secure password authentication’ and ‘log into mail server before…’ options
On the outgoing server tab, fill in the following

On the outgoing server tab, fill in the following

Step 6.

No need to change anything on the ‘connections’ tab

Fill in the following on the ‘advanced’ tab

  1. change ‘incoming server (POP3)’ to 995
  2. tick the box ‘the server requires an encrypted connection (SSL)’
  3. change ‘outgoing server’ to 587
  4. from the drop-down options, change the ‘use the following type of encrypted connection’ to TLS
  5. leave ‘server timeouts’ as is
  6. un-tick the ‘leave copies of the messages on the server’ (…which will download the actual email to your computer as opposed to just a copy – this helps avoid duplication)
  7. tick ‘OK’ to take you back to the ‘internet e-mail settings’ page
Fill in the following on the 'advanced' tab

Fill in the following on the ‘advanced’ tab

Step 7.

Back on the ‘internet e-mail settings’ page, click next to save the changes

Back on the 'internet e-mail settings' page, click next to save the changes

Back on the ‘internet e-mail settings’ page, click next to save the changes

 

 

 

 

A very simple guide to email on your portable devices (blackberry, iPhone, netbook etc.)

Many people have asked recently about using their email on their portable devices and it’s actually quite simple once you understand a few of the main principles

Here’s how seven Creative’s email system works

Firstly, a few definitions:

  • Local email client – this is an application on your home or office computer for reading and sending emails. Common local email clients are Outlook and Thunderbird
  • Remote web-server – this is your web-mail account and is accessed through your web browser. Your received emails are stored here until you collect them using a local email client or delete them by logging into the web-mail directly
  • SMTP – stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and is the system used when emails are SENT. It transfers the email from your out-box to the recipients in-box.
  • POP3 – stands for Post Office Protocol and is the system used by local email clients to retrieve emails from a remote web-server

If you’re using a local email client (see definitions), this is what happens when someone sends you an email:

This is what happens when someone sends you an email

This is what happens when someone sends you an email

Of course, you can log directly into your webmail account and reply to ‘Jim’ like this:

This is what happens when you reply to an email from your webmail account

This is what happens when you reply to an email from your webmail account

The problems with this system

This system works perfectly well when sending emails between computers, however, emails are commonly sent with very large attachments.

for example, Seven Creative’s email system allows you to send up-to 80 MB attachments which is obviously far too big to receive on a mobile phone or similar portable device! Firstly, portable devices tend to use the mobile network’s system for connecting to the internet which is very slow and most people are charged by the MB for this internet connection so it could be very expensive. Secondly, mobiles and portable devices are not designed for large attachments and storage is limited.

Surely, a better idea for mobile email would be to just give you a preview of the important bits of the email such as who it’s from, the text and the name of any attachments?

This is where IMAP comes in handy

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and is used for reading mail on portable devices.

IMAP allows you to just download the message headers i.e. the title and the text. This then gives you the option of either replying, ignoring or deleteing the message (and by ‘deleting the message’ it means removing it directly from the web server without having to ever download the actual message)

The size of the header information will normally be just a few bytes so is quick and cheap to download and doesn’t take up much storage space on your portable device.

The best thing about IMAP, however, is that it never actually deletes or removes anything from the webserver unless you tell it to. This means you’ll never end up with duplicate messages or some messages on one computer and others on another, for example, you can connect to your inbox, read an email, reply to the sender and then when you get home, your email is still there on the web-server for you to download as normal

IMAP runs in parallel to your POP3 address allowing you to read emails from multiple devices while keeping them always in one place

IMAP will also work with Microsoft Exchange server, however, it really does start getting complicated then… 🙁

Using IMAP to read your emails on a portable device

Using IMAP to read your emails on a portable device

It’s a lot simpler than you think…

…to start using your portable device to check your emails.

Let us know if you’d like to give it a go and we can supply you with IMAP and SMTP settings

Get in touch with us here