Outlook with two SMTP accounts?

[VP959]

I use a laptop at home, via a wifi broadband internet connection, and out and about via a GPRS mobile comms card. The problem is that to send emails I have to keep switching the account details over. This is getting tedious, as I use the thing every day, both at home and mobile. My home ISP wont work with the mobile GPRS service SMTP account setting and vice versa.

Does anyone know a workaround that's easier than editing the account info every day?

I've tried setting up two accounts, each with the specific POP and SMTP settings, but it still gives an error and I end up having to edit the SMTP settings manually to get it to send messages.

The laptop is a 1.6Ghz Centrino compliant jobbie, running XP Pro and Office XP.

[maxell]

google for postcastserver free prog that turns your pc into a SMTP server so you do not need your isp one

[BEagle]

VP - I had this trouble with the VMC card. So I set up 2 accounts in Outlook Express; one is 'Virgin Net' which is a POP3 and uses mail.virgin.net as both the incoming and outgoing mail server. I had difficulties using some wi-fi hotspots to send e-mails until Virgin advised me that I should tick 'My server requires authentication' in the 'Outgoing mail server' box.

For the VMC card (also POP3), the other account ('VMC') uses mail.virgin.net for the incoming mail server, but the outgoing server has to be set to send.vodafone.net

Rather than click 'Send/Recv', click on the down arrow and then on the appropriate account name.

It certainly wasn't the 'plug and play' which Vodafone alleged it would be!

The reliability of LH lounge Vodafone D2 wi-fi hotspots - or rather their associated computers - is also rather poor in my experience.

[VP959]

Thanks for this BEagle. I'm also using the VMC card, which insists that the SMTP be set to send.vodafone.net. The snag is that my home ISP (the one I use on the wifi connection, via a wireless router) insists on its own SMTP server.

I'll try the tip about setting both accounts up again and then using the "selective send/recieve" option, it sounds a lot easier than constantly going in to the account set up page and changing the SMTP server name!

I think I'll explore the option of setting up my own mail server as well in slower time, although I'm slightly baffled by it all. I'm not at all impressed with my ISPs level of service, their servers seem to go down with monotonous regularity. I have a spare 300Mhz PC hooked up to the network that I just use to drive an external back up hard drive (it's set to run a small backup job every night, backing up the main PC hard drive). I guess I could run this as a mailserver as I'm on broadband. At least then it's be my fault if the server goes down...............

[goates]

Are there any control panels or other programs that have something to do with changing locations?

Mac computers have something called the Location Manager which does exaclty what you need. You set up all of your network and email settings for home, save it as one profile, and then create one profile for each location or network you will be connecting to. All you need to do is tell the computer which location you are at, and it will adjust the email and network settings accordingly.

I thought WindowsXP had something similar, but I don't have a laptop myself. My girlfriend does have one though, so maybe I can find out tonight.

This may not directly solve your problem, but it maybe it will you an idea of what to look for.

goates

PS - If you play around with your own mail server, make sure it is properly secured. Otherwise anyone on the internet could use it to relay SPAM.

[BEagle]

VP - if you click 'send/recv', it'll probably try the deafult account first (your ISP's, no doubt?).

Try the 'selective' - I had weeks of difficulty before I figured all this out for myself, then gave an 'Idiot's Guide' to the dealer who sold me the card; they subsequently sent copies to all their other dealers!

This was what I wrote:

VODAFONE MOBILE CONNECT CARD

1. SIM Card. Customers should ensure that the dealer who sells them a Vodafone Mobile Connect (VMC) card also provides them with a SIM card specifically for the VMC card together with an appropriate Vodafone contract. This SIM card must be GPRS-enabled; Vodafone advise that the GPRS registration process may take up to 48 hours. Note that the VMC card will have its own telephone number and IMEI.

2. Software. Installation of the VMC software is relatively straightforward. However, until the GPRS registration process has been achieved, customers will be unable to use the VMC card for anything other than SMS text message generation and retrieval. Despite the pictures in Vodafone’s promotional literature, even with the correct 1024 pixel setting selected, the ‘Vodafone dashboard’ will only fill about 80% of the computer screen width.

3. Internet. Once the GPRS registration process has been achieved, customers will be able to access the Internet by selecting ‘Connect’ on the Vodafone dashboard, followed by ‘Web’ once connection has been established. Indicated connectivity rates of 57+ Kbps are not uncommon.

4. E-mail. It is very probable that customers will be unable to use their normal landline e-mail account to send e-mails, despite the claims made in Vodafone’s promotional literature. Users of Outlook Express 6 can overcome this by setting up an alternative e-mail account. However, they will first need to know their normal landline e-mail username and password; these should be obtained from their ISP customer service department. To set up an alternative e-mail account, proceed as follows:

a. Double-click on the ‘Outlook Express’ icon to open the programme.

b. Select ‘Cancel’ on the ‘Dial-up Connection’ dialogue box.

c. Select ‘Tools’ from the toolbar, followed by ‘Options’. Then uncheck ‘Send and receive messages at start up’ and select ‘OK’.

d. Select ‘Tools’ followed by ‘Accounts’. Select the ‘Mail’ tab on the resulting ‘Internet Accounts’ dialogue box. Then select ‘Add’. 3 options will be presented, select ‘Mail’.

e. The next dialogue box will ask you by what name you wish to be known on this new account. For simplicity it is easiest to use the same name as that used on your normal landline connection. Enter it, then select ‘Next’.

f. You will be asked for the e-mail address to be used for the account. Again, for simplicity it is easiest to use the same e-mail address as for your normal e-mails. Enter it, then select ‘Next’.

g. The next dialogue box will ask you to enter the ingoing and outgoing e-mail server names. The incoming mail server can be the same as for your normal e-mails; e.g. for Virgin Net it should be set to mail.virgin.net . The outgoing mail server must be set to send.vodafone.net . Then select ‘Next’.

h. The next dialogue box, ‘Internet Mail Logon’, will ask for the Account name and Password provided by your Internet Service Provider. Enter these in the appropriate fields and select ‘Remember password’. Most users will not need to select ‘Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA)’. Then select ‘Next’. The ‘Congratulations’ dialogue box will appear, select ‘Finish’.

i. The new account will now appear on the list of Internet Accounts. Highlight the new account and select ‘Properties’. The name of the account will appear; it is convenient to re-name it to remind you that this will be your VMC e-mail account, e.g. re-name it as ‘VMC’. Then select ‘Connection’.

j. Tick ‘Always connect to this account using:’ and then use the down arrow button to select ‘VMC.Internet Access’ followed by ‘OK’.

k. Decide which account to use as your default e-mail system, highlight it and select ‘Set as Default’. This will probably be your normal landline e-mail account.

l. To ensure that your normal landline e-mail account does not attempt to connect using the Vodafone Mobile Connect card, highlight your normal landline e-mail account name, then ‘Properties’, then ‘Connection’, then ‘Always connect to this account using:’ and then use the down arrow button to select the name of the landline service (e.g. Virgin.net) followed by ‘OK’.

5. Accounts. You will now have 2 independent e-mail accounts, your normal landline which you have ensured will always connect using your computer modem and a landline - and your VMC account which you have instructed always to connect using the VMC card.

6. Sending e-mails. To send an e-mail, do not click ‘Send/Recv’. Instead, use the adjacent down arrow button and decide whether to use the landline or VMC connection. Highlight the preferred option and click on it; the ‘Dial-up Connection’ dialogue box will appear; click ‘connect’ and the computer should then connect to the appropriate service.

7. Conclusion. The VMC card e-mail system is far from fully automatic and it will take considerably longer than Vodafone’s claimed 5 minutes to set up. However, once set up the VMC card is capable of fast and reliable e-mailing. Using plain text rather than rich text will save considerable time and cost!

[VP959]

Phew! Thanks for all this BEagle, I agree 100% with your comments re: the VMC blurb.

One word of warning. Although Vodafone point out that there are additional charges when connecting to an overseas partner service provider, I only recently found out how much these charges were. Believe it or not I was charged just over £50 for less than 2 Mb of email traffic when in France recently, on top of the normal monthly subscription to Vodafone.

I've just downloaded and got postcastserver working on my main PC and it seem to work like a dream. I'll try porting it to the laptop tomorrow and see if it works with the VMC card. If it does, then I'll post details back on here, as it's an even simpler fix than selectively using send and receive from two accounts. Thanks for the tip on this little program maxell, a good bit of advice.

[BEagle]

There's an investigation currently going on into the rip-off charges resulting from overseas use of mobile phones at the moment, so perhaps we'll see such things having to change soon....

Nowadays I only use VMC as a last resort - although it's quite handy for sending sms. W-LAN is far, far better.

And as for Vodafone trying to push their 3G VMC card, as they say, YGBSM!!! The GPRS card is expensive enough, heavens knows what 3G would cost!

[VP959]

An update. Postcastserver appears not to work via the VMC GPRS card, although it works fine over the LAN/cable connection. It talks to the Vodafone software OK (after I'd configured it to look for the VMC mobile connection when the LAN wasn't present), but then fails to resolve email addresses via DNS (according to the Postcastserver logs). It may be that I can manually set a different DNS server IP within Postcastserver to overcome this, but presumably I'd need to do some more digging about to find the Vodafone one (it's not obvious from the dreadful Vodafone support info).

For now I'll stick with your suggestion BEagle. I discovered that I could get the "old" Outlook send/receive toolbar button back in Outlook XP (the one that lets you choose which account to use), and this seems to work pretty well. It's just a shame that I have to manually check accounts and can't just let Outlook do it in the background.

The massive charges in France were "connection fees" rather than GPRS data tariff charges it seems. I was in a low signal area and consequently the VMC card kept repeatedly making new connections every time there was a momentary signal dropout. Every time it did so I was charged the "minimum call fee" or some such, all without me knowing! It's about time someone sorted these unscrupulous rogues out.

Thanks for the help folks, much appreciated.