I am receiving email fine, but I cannot send messages: Print

Sometimes you open your email client and your email will arrive in your inbox, but when it comes to sending a message, you get an error message.

This is particularly likely to occur when travelling and connecting through a different ISP from normal, because the ISP may block outgoing ports as a safeguard against their connections being used to send spam.

Other causes for not being able to send include an invalid recipient address: it's usually worth recording any error message you see on screen, however cryptic.

Here are the steps to follow to fix this:

Instructions for changing the port (and sometimes which port to use) may vary depending on the exact version of the email program you are using, but the following covers most of the common ones.

Firstly, please contact you mail or domain host to get the correct mail settings and your email password. Your domain refers to the part after the @ sign in your email address for example: john@mweb.co.za where domain = mweb.co.za or john@edentelecom.co.za where domain = edentelecom.co.za. If you are not sure who your domain host is, follow this link for .co.za accounts: http://co.za/whois.shtml , enter the domain name in the space provided and the contact details of your host will be displayed.

Outlook Express and Windows Mail

1. Go to Account Settings (Tools > Accounts)
2. Click on the Mail tab
3. Highlight your email account, and then click on Properties
4. On the Servers tab, check that you are using the right SMTP server. Outgoing mail (SMTP) should usually read smtp.yourdomain
5. Make sure there is a tick in My server requires authentication (the Settings should be same settings as incoming).
6. If your mail host requires a specific server port(other than default), click on the Advanced tab, under Server Port Numbers, change the Outgoing mail server port to whatever port is required.
7. Save your changes and try sending email again.

Outlook 2007, 2010 and 2013 (and Outlook 2003 SP2 and above)

1. Go to Tools menu > Account settings
2. Select the relevant email account, and click the Change button (third from the left above that line)
3. Make sure that the Outgoing mail server (SMTP) box reads smtp.yourdomain
4. Click the More settings button to the bottom right.
5. Click the second tab along, Outgoing server and ensure My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication is ticked. Select Use same settings as my incoming mail server. Require secure password authentication should not be ticked.
6. Click the right-hand tab, Advanced.
7. For Outgoing server (SMTP), use the default port 25 unless instructed to do otherwise by your mail host.
8. Cancel any messages being sent, and try sending again.
9. If you still get an error, you may want to try using Outgoing server (SMTP) without any encryption (not secure), or possibly with SSL encryption (secure).

Outlook 2003

Older releases of Outlook 2003 use port 465 for a secure connection, and wont do port 587. So first we try 465, and if something objects to that, fall back on port 2525.

1. Go to Tools > Email Accounts
2. Select View or change existing e-mail accounts and click Next
3. Select the relevant email address and click the Change button
4. Make sure that the Outgoing mail server (SMTP) box reads smtp.yourdomain.
5. Click the More settings button to the bottom right.
6. Click the second tab along, Outgoing server and ensure My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication is ticked. Select Use same settings as my incoming mail server. Require secure password authentication should not be ticked.
7. Click the right-hand tab, Advanced.
8. For Outgoing server (SMTP), use the default port unless instructed otherwise by your mail host.
9. Click OK and next and Finish.
10. Cancel any messages being sent, and try sending again.
11. If you still get an error, you may want to try using 2525 Outgoing server (SMTP) without encryption (not secure).

Windows Live Mail 2009 and above

This is the email program that comes with Microsoft Live Essentials for Windows 7 and 8 (not the same as the Windows 8 Mail program). (Technical note: Microsoft now prefers STARTTLS like the rest of the world, but only on ports 587 and 25.)

1. Right-click on your email account and choose Properties
2. Click on the second tab along, Servers
3. Ensure my server requires authentication is ticked. (If you click More settings it should show Use same settings as my incoming mail server)
4. Click the Advanced tab to the top right.
5. In the top box Outgoing server (SMTP) use default port 25 or as instructed by your mail host.
6. Click OK and Close
7. Try sending mail again. If you have problems, try port 465 (with SSL), or as a last resort 2525 (with SSLunticked).

Windows 8 Mail

It is suggested you upgrade to a better email program, such as gmail. If you have no other option:

1. Start Windows 8 mail
2. Wave your mouse over the bottom right of the screen to get the charm menu
3. Choose settings, then accounts
4. Select the mail account
5. Scroll down to the Outgoing (SMTP) email server and use default port 25 or otherwise as instructed by your mail host.
6. On earlier versions port 587 may not work correctly, so use port 465 and tick Outgoing server requires SSL
7. Tick the requires authentication and use same settings below that boxes as well and click Connect.

Apple Mail (Mac OS X)

Later versions of Mac Mail may be able to automatically choose between 465, 587 or 25, which should work in most cases.

1. Go to Mail menu > Preferences
2. Click the Accounts icon along the top
3. Select the mail account
4. Select the Account information tab
5. At the bottom should be Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP). To the right of that click the list, and choose Edit SMTP server list.
6. Older version of Apple Mail: If there is no list, there may be a button marked Outgoing server to click and the port setting is more likely to be relevant. See Note for old versions below. Otherwise continue immediately below.
7. Newer version: click the Account Information and ensure the server name is smtp.yourdomain. Click Advanced, and tick Use SSL. Also click Authentication and change to Password. Your user name is usually the part before the @ sign, and is not the full address.
1. If youve changed these, they are more likely to be the problem than the port, so make sure you are using the default ports (25, 465 and 587), Click OK and save and try again.
2. If this still doesnt work, go back to the Account Information >SMTP list > Advanced and try port 587 and try again. If this fails, try changing from default ports, use port 2525, and turn off Use SSL(not encrypted).

Note for old versions: you should have a box marked SMTP Server Options. Ensure Outgoing mail server is smtp.yourdomain, change server port to 587, tick Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), Authentication=password, and user name and password as above.

Intermittent failure to authenticate on Mac Mail under OS X Yosemite

Intermittent failures to send, usually producing messages like SMTP connection to server smtp.yourdomain failed have been reported many times from October 2014 onwards. The bug appears to affect different accounts at different times and is still reported as of February 2015.

Try the procedure in the previous section first, checking that SMTP authentication is set to Password, and retype your password. If it has been working sometimes using the same connection (eg wifi, broadband), you probably dont need to change the port number. Also in these SMTP server advanced settings, and the other server settings, if there is an option Automatically detect and maintain settings (seems to be there from OS X 10.10.1), please untick this. If you have changed anything, try sending the message again.

If you are still having the problem, again go to Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Edit SMTP server list > Advanced and ensure Allow insecure authentication is ticked (this option, if available, allows plain password authentication although it is still over a SSL/TLS encrypted connection and so secure). Try again. If this stops working again, the following procedure is suggested

1. Close Mail
2. In Finder, choose Go >Go to folder, enter ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/ or otherwise navigate to the MailData folder
3. Select the file Accounts.list and copy it to your desktop as a backup
4. Back in the MailData folder, double click it to open in TextEdit or use some other text editor
5. For each account there is a line that says <key>UserAllowsInsecureAuthentication</key>
6. underneath that line is a <false/>  change this to <true/>
7. Close the text editor and save the file
8. Launch Mail and try again

The above workaround is based on an Apple Forums posting. Other common Yosemite issues are listed here. You may also want to report your problem to Apple.

Outlook 2011 for Mac

1. Start Outlook
2. Go to the Tools menu, then select Accounts
3. You probably just have one account on the left-hand side. If you have
   more than one, select the correct mail account.
4. Down the bottom you should have Outgoing server which should be smtp.yourdomain. Under that, make sure Override default port and Use SSL to connect are both ticked if that is required by your mail host. The box to the right of the outgoing server should be the correct port number.
5. Then click More Options..
6. click Authentication and select Use Incoming server info
7. Click OK and close the Accounts window.

More information and alternatives

If youre still having problems, please write down the following information and email us:

1. Your email address that you are having problems with
2. Mail program that you are using for example outlook
3. Copy any error messages that you are getting

For short periods, you might be content to use webmail. This can usually be found by typing the following into the url field in an internet browser: mail.yourdomain.