Using Multiple Email Clients

Today most of us have multiple email accounts, addresses and computers and so the situation often arises that you need to access email using a different email client.  This situation arises frequently for example :

• When you Travel
• Need to access work email from home or vice versa
• Have multiple computers that you frequently use.
• Have multiple Email Accounts/addresses and want to keep them completely separate.

Here we are going to be looking at how the different clients work so that we can configure them to access the mail without affecting our normal email.

The Main problems

There are several problems that frequently arise:

• Email is not retained on the email server.
• Unable to authenticate when sending email
• Bad setup on other clients.

Email is not Retained on the Email Server

This is a common problem when people try to access email from a remote location with an email client like outlook express.

The problem arise because most clients are configured to use the POP3 protocol to access email and the default behaviour is for the client to move the email from the email server to the email client.

So if client A accesses the email then later on client B tries to access the email it can't as it is no longer on the email server but instead it is on the PC that has client A installed.

There are several solutions:

1. Configure Clients A/or B to leave the email on the email server.
2. Don't use POP3 but IMap4 which leaves the email on the server by default.
3. Use a web browser as the second client as it always leaves the email on the server unless you explicitly delete it.

Unable to Authenticate When Sending Email

This is a problem if you use an Email account provided by your ISP and you try to access the email when you are connected to the Internet using another ISP.

For example at home/work you connect your laptop to the internet using ISP A and have email accounts hosted by ISP A (very common). When you send email the ISP knows that it can trust you because it knows your IP address and it trusts this IP address because it is given to you by the ISP.

Because it trusts you it lets you send email.

You now take the laptop to another office or dial in using another ISP (ISP B). Now when you try to send email it looks at your IP address and because it belongs to ISP B and not ISP A it rejects it and so you cannot send.

You can in this scenario receive email.

There are several solutions:

1. You can try using account/password authentication for SMTP see SMTP overview.
2. You can use a web based client as they don't send using SMTP and so they don't have the problem.

Bad Setup on Other Clients

The email clients need to be set up correctly. If you change the password for you email account then you need to change it on both machines/clients.

Always check the setup and make sure you keep a note of the email account names and passwords as well as the SMTP and POP3/IMAP4 web server addresses. See Email Account Setup Information.

Solution: