Sending e-mail via a mobile phone connection
When you’re out of the office, how do you access e-mail?
If you have a Blackberry or iPhone, you’re probably fine. If you access the Internet via WiFi, you’re also probably a happy bunny.
But what if you use a mobile phone, or a ‘dongle’ from one of the mobile phone suppliers?
Oh dear, oh dear…..
It’s all well and good when you want to send e-mail from your O2, Vodafone, 3 account etc, but not when you want to send from your business e-mail account – like nigel@clarihon.co.uk.
All is not lost though – unless you’ve got Orange (more about that later).
The first thing to realise is that e-mail from your laptop of mobile device needs to go out via some sort of ‘outgoing’ e-mail server. At home, or on your home PC it would be mail.clarihon.co.uk or similar. On the move, using a mobile phone or dongle this is very unlikely to work.
Mobile phone operators almost always restrict you to using THEIR outgoing servers – often referred to as SMTP servers. If you change the outgoing server setting in your e-mail account set-up it’ll probably work. For the common mobile providers the list of settings is below:
smtp.o2.co.uk
smtp.vodafone.net
smtp.t-email.co.uk
smtp.orange.co.uk
smtp.three.co.uk
For virgin, Talk Talk etc, please check their Support web sites or call them.
For Orange users the ‘fun’ doesn’t end there. Another setting needs to be changed. It’s the SMTP ‘port’ and it MIGHT work if set to 587.
For further information on the ‘challenges’ faced when roaming with e-mail have a look on Google and read the articles here:
http://www.knowyourmobile.com/info/1310/use_our_internet_setting_chart_to_setup_email_and_the_internet_on_your_mobile.html
http://www.geekgirls.com/articles/2010/03/portable-smtp-take-your-email-with-you/
Lastly, I don’t think it’s possible, in Outlook at least, to store two configurations for the same e-mail account, one for home and one for mobile, and switch between them. You need to edit the the outgoing server configuration depending whether you’re using your home broadband connection or the mobile one.
The joys of IT eh?…..
James Butler Said,
July 20, 2010 @ 4:00 pm
I never thought I would know something IT that Nigel doesn’t! It IS possible to have two settings for an account in Outlook. I just set up one account named PB (for Painless Business) and one named PBVodafone, with all vodafones required settings. This saves me having to re-edit the account settings when I switch between wireless and the dongle.
All I have to do is remember to send from the Vodafone account when I am on dongle. Seems to work.
It did cause an issue this week when I chose the option to leave messages on the server for a few days as back-up, because then it downloaded everything twice. Have found a way round that now too.
For the record, whilst in this very rare instance my own experience extends beyond Nigel’s, I openly acknowledge that without his “no babble” approach to all things tech, I wouldn’t even have the dongle working.