Configuring Your Email Account in Outlook

Now that Outlook 2003 has fully opened and you are looking your inbox, you will need to select “E-mail Accounts” from the “Tools” drop down menu at the top of the screen, as follows:

In other versions of Outlook, the “E-mail Accounts” option of the Tools meu might simply be referred to as “Accounts”.

Having selected this option a new dialog window will come to the fore, asking you what type of email account you wish to set up:

In this instance, the choice is between POP3 and IMAP. What you choose will really depend on how you wish to use your computer for access emails.

POP3 is a protocol that enables Outlook to access the email server and download all the emails contained thereon to your computer. As the end user you can chose to either leave the received emails on the server, or to delete them after a certain time period as a setting in Outllook).

IMAP on the other hand is a protocol that allows the end user to manage ALL of their emails on the server, both sent and received. This may sound better, but will require more ready management, which if you are a novice might not be the best idea.

The discussion about POP3 versus IMAP isn’t quite the one for this review of how to set up Outlook 2003 with CPanel, so onwards with the instructions!

Setting Up Your E-Mail Details in Outlook

Having selected POP3, you will be presented with a new dialog window:

Whether you choose POP3 or IMAP the screen will look the same, and is divided into 4 sections:

• User Information
  • Your Name (First Last): should be the name you wish to appear as emails being received from in the respective column of any recipients email inbox.
  • E-mail Address: should be the email you are setting up in full, and well formed.
• Server information
  • Incoming mail server (POP3): should be “mail.yourdomain.com” where yourdomain.com refers to the domain name the email is associated with, for example delamainit.com.
  • Outgoing mail server (SMTP): should be the same as the incoming mail server.
• Logon Information
  • User Name: needs to be the full and well formed email address “user@yourdomain”, for example makecontact@delamainit.com
  • Password: obviously needs to be the correctly entered password assigned in CPanel. If you wish not to have to enter the password every time you check your email, ensure that the “Remember Password” box is ticked.
• Test Settings
  • After filling out the information on the screen, you can test your account by clicking on the button entitiled “Test Account Settings …” This will run through a series of tests for incoming and outgoing emails and will verify for you that the entire setting up working. If it returns an error, please read these carefully and act accordingly.

Common Problems and How to Fix Them

Able to Receive but Unable to Send

Frequently ISPs (Internet Service Providers) will block all outgoing email traffic for servers outside its network. This is primareily as an anti-spam measure, so as to reduce the amount of junk email leaving their network via infected computers that are zombified spambots.

There are 2 solutions to this problem. The first is to setup your SMTP settings so that you are relaying your outgoing email via your own ISP. You will need to have an email account with them and also request SMTP settings from them. These will be entered on the E-Mail Account details pages, as well as under the “Outgoing Server” tab of the window that appears once you click “More Settings”, as follows:

From here, select “My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication” and then “Log on using” before filling out the username and passwod for the account on your ISP’s SMTP server. Make sure you filled out the hostname for the ISP’s SMTP server on the initial screen, as these details will not work with the email server of your own domain, and will thus generate further errors.

The other route to fixing this problem is to change the SMTP port settings, from the standard port 25, to port 1007. This is unique to the services provided by Delamain IT and will NOT work elsewhere. This can be done under the “Advanced” tab of the “More Settings” dialog window.

Username or Password Authentication Problems

Authentication errors can soemtimes be caused in Outlook by it handling of the “@” sign in the username. This can be fixed by switching the “@” for a “%” percent sign. If this doesn’t work, then please double check that you have entered both the email address for the username and the password correctly.

Finishing Up and Getting Started Sending and Receiving Emails

Assuming that everything has gone to plan, click “Next” and you will be presented with a screen telling you that the new email account has been successfully setup.

Close this by clicking “Finish”. You are now ready to send and receive emails using your own domain name.