Sending and Receiving Email

<----------Email Setup

What happens when you send and receive email, where is it stored and how do you access it.

Sending Email

For desktop based clients Email is sent using the SMTP protocol and because of spam the security on this protocol has been progressively tightened over the last few years.

This means that one of the biggest problems encountered is configuring the SMTP protocol correctly. Take a look at SMTP overview for more details.

Again Webmail has no configuration issues as SMTP is not used.

Receiving Email

Email sent to your email address will appear first in your inbox on the Email Server. When it comes to reading that email you can either read it and leave it on the Email server or move/or copy it to your desktop and read it there.

If you are using a desktop client like Outlook Express with POP3 as the receiving protocol (most common configuration) then by default when your email client connects to the email server it moves the email to the desktop.

This means that the email is no longer stored on the email server which has several important ramifications:

• You cannot access the email with a second client
• You need backup the email yourself
• You have problems if you wish to move to another machine as you need to transfer the email.

It is for these reasons that I recommend that you either change to using the IMAP4 Protocol with desktop clients or if you must use POP3 (some email providers only support this protocol) then you leave a copy of the email on the email server (all POP3 clients have this as a configuration option). See Leaving Email on the internet.

If you use IMAP4 then the email is copied to your email client by default and you can manage it there. If you delete the email on the client the copy on the server is also deleted i.e. the inbox on the server and the inbox on the client are synchronized.

Webmail access is direct to the mailbox on the server and all mail manipulation is done there. Webmail is the ideal way to access email if you travel frequently and need access from foreign machines (i.e. Internet cafe, remote offices etc).

Email Notifications- Send/Receive Button

Email clients like Outlook Express/thunderbird are not aware of new emails arriving on the email server until they connect to the server to read them i.e. they are not notified of new email but must check for it.

This setting is configurable and is normally between 10 and 30 minutes. Screenshot below shoes Outlook express setting (under tools>options).

You can manually instruct the client to check for new email and send any email in the outbox by clicking the send/receive button in the top toolbar.

>>Your Mailbox

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