Thunderbird and SMTP settings

After much heart-ache and help/discussion with people here I swapped to Thunderbird a while ago, because of the mess that is Windows Live Mail on Vista.

I just met a problem.

A couple of days ago I successfully sent an email to a virgilio.it address which went through fine. I sent another today and it was returned undelivered due apparently to a Tsohost SMTP server address being blacklisted at the far end.

Tsohost are on the case but it looks like all Italians are at Monza for the weekend.

One work-around I just tried was to set the SMTP server on the email account I wish to send from to the O2 SMTP server I have available, which works fine on the O2 email account in Thunderbird.

Doesn't work! Thunderbird still connects to and sends using the default SMTP server which is the one on Tsohost for the domain I am sending from!

If I send from the O2 email account it connects and sends correctly through O2.

Am I doing something wrong, or is it a bug? I think it is connecting to Tsohost POP3 server and not bothering then to check which SMTP server to use. Thunderbird 3.0.7.

Sounds like either you aren't correctly changing your outgoing SMTP address or you're having problems (which would be expected) if you are writing from an address that O2 aren't allowing you to 'relay' as it's with another provider.

You may be right, but!

As I think you know, in TB the SMTP server is in a drop-down list of those you have set up. I just selected it in my personal domain account, so it is identical to that in my O2 domain account.

Re relaying, using robertos as an example but that isn't the domain, I just don't want to publish the personal one, the fact that "robertos" is hosted on Tsohost should surely not stop me using O2 SMTP server? I thought that was what they intend you to do when they block port 25 to Tsohost SMTP, which of course is got round by using a different port.

In any case TB doesn't visibly attempt to connect to O2 SMTP. It just uses "robertos" SMTP immediately.

Tried changing the outgoing port to 587 fixed the grief I had a while ago ? (Just guessing TBH)

????

On the O2 SMTP one?

The problem isn't using using Tsohost SMTP server, it is that the Tsohost SMTP server is blacklisted at the other end. Before I contacted Tsohost and copied them the rejection header I checked the rejected IP address and it is registered to Tsohost.

Hi Bob,

I will attempt to contact virgilio.it. The IP isn't on any blacklists aside from Backscatterer and no ISP should be making delivery decisions based on that.

My reply to that was that all Italians could be at Monza for the weekend.

So I'm trying to send from the same domain through the O2 SMTP server to get round the problem.

I could easily send through full O2 email of course, but don't want to because of the address.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

After much heart-ache and help/discussion with people here I swapped to Thunderbird a while ago, because of the mess that is Windows Live Mail on Vista.

What mess is that? Have you tried Windows Mail (not Live) which comes with Vista? It's easy to use. Or perhaps you meant that?

Your problem can only be due to a misconfigured setting in TB. Any Mail Client is capable of sending thro' a SMTP server of your choice and should not be dreaming up one of its own. Perhaps a default needs changing?

Slip of the post .

Yes, I ditched Windows Mail because it comes nowhere near doing what I needed. Outlook Express was fine .

So I tried Windows Live and almost everything else under the sun. Thunderbird is almost perfect in what it does, and boy did I try to avoid it.

So,

Your problem can only be due to a misconfigured setting in TB. Any Mail Client is capable of sending thro' a SMTP server of your choice and should not be dreaming up one of its own. Perhaps a default needs changing?

Do you know how TB works?

The account for the domain is set up with POP3 to Tsohost POP3 server. SMTP servers are set up separately. You can set a default to be used at account creation, but during the setup you can also select the one you want for this account from all the ones you have set up.

I definitely have the O2 SMTP server now selected for the relevant domain, instead of the Tsohost SMTP server. But the Tsohost SMTP server is still used.

The O2 account with the O2 SMTP server works fine.

Hence the opening post. As far as I can see all my settings are correct. Is there a bug so that having established connection with the POP3 server first it doesn't check to see if the SMTP server is different? (In the case of Tsohost they happen to be the same, as with several email setups). If no bug, then what have I got wrong, from what I describe?

OK, I was trying to help

FWIW: I find Windows Mail on my Vista equal to OE on my XP.

No, I don't know TB; I was generalizing. I used many Mail Clients in my work. I remember one like that where the POP3 is associated with the Account, but the SMTPs are in a separate list which you select from at some stage. It might have been Netscape, but I don't know. How long has TB been around and what's its provenance?

TB is the Mozilla email, like Firefox is the browser.

I run email on seven or eight domains on five POP3 servers. I want separate In boxes and Sent boxes for each POP3 server.

On the personal domain I want three main folders into which to move some of the incoming mail using rules, leaving the remainder in the Inbox.

All of those main folders have a variable (as needed) number of sub-folders receiving mail via those rules, but some going into the main folder itself. For example main folders by person, subfolders such as BT, O2, Tsohost, British Gas, particular people, particular entertainment venues.

Currently the subfolders by main folder are 9:4:1.

Complex, but OE did something similar fairly well. TB is better. WM and WML are terrible and/or cannot do it in the way OE did or give a sensible screen display.

But this is a total side-issue and there is a lengthy thread ending up with the choice of TB. I really don't want to go back to a discussion of a suitable client at this stage.

The only significant problem so far is as described twice now in this thread.

Summat's oop with it! Maybe it, maybe me. I wanna fix it.

OK, I'm sure I can do all that by more or less identical rules in WM as I can do in OE. But that's a side or non issue! Going back to the main issue ...

As an experiment, temp corrupt both the SMTP server names for O2 and TsoHost, e.g. "smtp.o2.co.NIX" for O2, do a send on the TsoHost a/c using the O2 SMTP. You should get an error message; which SMTP server is referenced in the error? This will prove whether it is TB that is choosing the TsoHost SMTP in place of the O2 one, or something else.