subject: My Daughter Fixed My Outgoing SMTP Server Settings [print this page] My Daughter Fixed My Outgoing SMTP Server Settings
Don't you just hate it when your kid shows how much smarter than you she is? I'm reasonably competent with computers, but my daughter is studying computer science in college. So guess who I go to when I have computer issues. Like the need to change outgoing (SMTP) email settings.
Anyway, I was visiting her and trying to keep up with my work at the office at the same time. But I couldn't send email. I received it fine, but couldn't send it. I thought maybe I would just use my Hotmail account to send messages, but that would be clumsy and tip the boss off that I was doing something different (I didn't see any reason for him to know I was 1000 miles away).
My boss is more than a little old fashioned, and still not quite happy with the idea that the company lets people work from home once a week to save energy. The idea of me being halfway across the country would have really set him off.
So I was already sweating when I talked to my daughter. She laughed at me and said we just needed to adjust my outgoing (SMTP) email settings. She explained to me that there companies are changing the way they handle mail sent into their networks from the outside to prevent spamming, and phishing, and malware attacks.
As a result, we had to go into Outlook's Account settings page and change the settings on my email account. Specifically, I had to sign up with an SMTP relay service. They would allow Outlook to connect to their server no matter where I was physically located. Then we needed to change the "Outgoing mail server (SMTP)" settings to point at the service's SMTP server instead of my original one.
Once that was set up, Outlook would receive mail from my regular mail server like always, but send it through the new SMTP relay. As far as anyone else would be able to tell, nothing had changed (my email address was the same before and after), but now I would be able to send from anywhere on Earth that had an Internet connection.
Of course I had almost no idea what she was talking about, but she walked me through figuring out exactly what the issue was and fixing it. We got my email fixed in 20 minutes while sitting in her dorm room!
