h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

hi

not me but my friend...
(i dont have mac mail up and running because i havent even read the directions yet)
he is not able to send email out of his mac mail thingie anymore...

it will either go to outbox and then when he tries to send it from there it wont send

or

it will try to send but never completes the send... the little circle thing just keeps going round and round...

so the thing is that we ran the mail doctor thing and
it made his free email provider's smtp thing red and
his internet provider's smtp thing 'connecting' but never finishing...
also.... there were some details but we didnt know what they meant

help?

Error messages are always useful. If you can find out what the error message said then that might help. Mine did that a few months ago when they started rolling out 'mobile me' but it soon sorted it's self out.

TB!! i hardly recognized you in your costume!!

there were no error messages.... just wont send...

"...soon sorted itself out."

how do you mean? this guy really needs to fix this help please?
maybe i am not describing this well?

My problem was at apple's end, I use apple for email, web site, and stuff. Once Apple had got their server fixed it was fine. All I can suggest is that your friend try a different app, temporarily, or webmail, if his email provider has that.

Without any kind of feedback from the computer I can't really make much of a guess at what's wrong.

okay... we still have the problem... will try to make it happen again... what i described and i will get back here with detailed description of what mail doc, or whatever its called, says...

i have a feeling he may have inadvertantly okayed something in mac mail preferences... or maybe when he composes off line it does something to the mac mail way of doing things...

thanks ....

Can he send emails?

no... thats the problem... he receives both from his free email account and from his internet provider email account but cannot send from either

His internet provider should have a web page that says what all the settings should be. It might give you the settings for thunderbird or outlook, but they're all the same - the only differences will be in the instructions about where to type the settings in. So find that page.

For sending mail, you need to change the setting for the "SMTP" or "outgoing" mail server. So look for that in the ISP's instructions. When you have that, we can tell you where it goes in Mac Mail, though it will help to know if this is Mac OS X 10.5, 10.4, 10.3 etc.

k thanks am telling him about this... thanks

I don't understand how Mail could affect Mail AND webmail (which has nothing to do with your computer at all)

I've had problems sending mail when receiving is ok when I've used my laptop at other people's wifi. That's about making sure the outgoing server is set right (as already mentioned).

kea, if he's using the mail app to collate all his "webmail" messages, then when he replies it will try to send the reply through his default SMTP server.

Thanks Peet So he could still go online and send emails via webmail.

Yup.