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Scoates · Sep 12, 2004, 11:51 AM

Could someone please tell me how I can switch .mac accounts through Apple's Mail program? I purchased an annual .mac membership while I was also on a sixty day trial .mac membership under a different screen name. Apparently, Apples Mail program can only have one .mac membership account on it and I am having trouble deleting the trial version and replacing it with the annual one. I am running on the Lamp iMac model with fully updated Panther software. Any help would be appreciated, Thank you!

-Steve

Appleman · Sep 12, 2004, 11:55 AM

System Preferences -> .Mac?

aaanorton · Sep 12, 2004, 12:05 PM

Originally posted by Appleman:
System Preferences -> .Mac?

Yeah, then delete the old .Mac acct in Mail prefs and add a new one. Mail will the fill in all the settings from System Prefs.

Scoates · Sep 12, 2004, 12:06 PM

That was it! Thank you, I did not think to look there (new user learning every day). Increasingly a Mac addict!

Parky · Sep 12, 2004, 06:17 PM

One small point -

You can have more than one .Mac email account in Apple OS X Mail.

All you need to do is add an account manually and say it is a .Mac account in the drop down list.

It works fine for us, we have a .Mac account each in our mail.

Ian

Scoates · Sep 12, 2004, 07:59 PM

Thanks...

Since doing this I can recieve e-mail, but i can't send it. Everytime I try to a window pops up asking me for my password, and when i enter it, it just asks again. Why does this happen?
Thanks,
Steve

Krusty · 09:25 PM

Originally posted by Scoates:
Thanks...

Since doing this I can recieve e-mail, but i can't send it. Everytime I try to a window pops up asking me for my password, and when i enter it, it just asks again. Why does this happen?
Thanks,
Steve

A LOT of ISPs now block access to any outgoing mail servers other than their own (to keep people from mass spamming or unwittingly spreading viruses through other mail services). My ISP did the exact same thing a couple of months ago -- and my .Mac outgoing mail server stopped working

Fortunately, there is an easy work around. Set your .Mac outgoing mail server to the same as your ISPs outgoing mail server (it should already exist in the"outgoing mail" dropdown in your Mail account preferences). It won't change anything as far as the recipient is concerned (it'll still say its from <yourname>[at]mac.com) but will be routed out by your ISPs mail server instead. Of course, your incoming mail server will stay as it is (mail.mac.com).

wataru · Sep 13, 2004, 02:33 AM

Mail was probably set to authenticate to the SMTP server with your old username and password. You can change it in Mail's preferences.

chessplayer · Sep 13, 2004, 03:34 AM

Be careful about deleting accounts in Mail. It sometimes (or used to?) delete all email associated with that account if you delete an account.

aaanorton · Sep 13, 2004, 12:17 PM

Originally posted by wataru:
Mail was probably set to authenticate to the SMTP server with your old username and password. You can change it in Mail's preferences.

Yup. In the accounts prefs, click on SMTP server settings. The server should be smtp.mac.com and authentication should be set to Password with your username and password in the provided spaces.

Chris Grande · Sep 13, 2004, 05:24 PM

Originally posted by chessplayer:
Be careful about deleting accounts in Mail. It sometimes (or used to?) delete all email associated with that account if you delete an account.

When you delete a account the inbox/draft/trash/junk folders for that account are removed. So all mail in the inbox goes alone with them. If you move/copy your mail to a different mailbox then that mail will be safe. This is something that This is something that should have been fixed awhile ago.

chessplayer · Sep 13, 2004, 05:39 PM

Originally posted by Chris Grande:
When you delete a account the inbox/draft/trash/junk folders for that account are removed. So all mail in the inbox goes alone with them. If you move/copy your mail to a different mailbox then that mail will be safe. This is something that This is something that should have been fixed awhile ago.

Yes, that is very bad behavior by Mail. It's easy to think Oh, I'm not using that account any more and delete it, not realizing that it may delete a lot of your email sent to that account. That's why I posted the warning above.

aaanorton · Sep 13, 2004, 06:20 PM

Well, it tells you it is going to do this and makes you confirm that you want to. I don't see it as a problem to be 'fixed'.

Scoates · Sep 13, 2004, 08:02 PM

"Fortunately, there is an easy work around. Set your .Mac outgoing mail server to the same as your ISPs outgoing mail server (it should already exist in the"outgoing mail" dropdown in your Mail account preferences). It won't change anything as far as the recipient is concerned (it'll still say its from <yourname>[at]mac.com) but will be routed out by your ISPs mail server instead. Of course, your incoming mail server will stay as it is (mail.mac.com)."

..Okay, I checked the drop down menu , but the only outgoing address was my .Mac one, despite the fact I am using Bellsouth.net. I checked Network in system prefs and found the Bell south IP address.. can I create a new outgoing server using that , somewhow?

Thanks for all the help so far.

aaanorton · Sep 13, 2004, 09:31 PM

Did you check my post 3 or 4 up? That should do it.

Krusty · Sep 13, 2004, 11:53 PM

Originally posted by Scoates:
.Okay, I checked the drop down menu , but the only outgoing address was my .Mac one, despite the fact I am using Bellsouth.net. I checked Network in system prefs and found the Bell south IP address.. can I create a new outgoing server using that , somewhow?

Thanks for all the help so far.

Yes, you can use your Bellsouth outgoing mail server to send .Mac mails. As a matter of fact, Bellsouth is my ISP as well so I consider it likely that you are experiencing the issue I described above.

aanorton described a few emails up how to change your .mac outgoing mail server to your new .mac account settings. His advice is good .. but here's how to tell whether you need to follow his (simpler) advice or the more complex advice I'll give below.

Go to Applications/Utilities/ and open Network Utility. Choose the "Ping" tab. In the text field type "mail.mac.com" and press the Ping button. If you get a response, that means that you are able to access the .Mac outgoing SMTP server and you should follow aanorton's advice above

However, if you are on bellsouth, you may not be able to access .Mac's outgoing server. I just re-ran the Ping utility on my own machine again (for the first time in months). Here's what I get:

Code:
Ping has started ...

PING mail.mac.com (17.250.248.64): 56 data bytes

--- mail.mac.com ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss

Now, if I ping bellsouth's outgoing server, I get:

Code:
Ping has started ...

PING mail.bellsouth.net (205.152.59.17): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 205.152.59.17: icmp_seq=0 ttl=246 time=30.073 ms
64 bytes from 205.152.59.17: icmp_seq=1 ttl=246 time=35.904 ms
64 bytes from 205.152.59.17: icmp_seq=2 ttl=246 time=177.494 ms
64 bytes from 205.152.59.17: icmp_seq=3 ttl=246 time=169.474 ms
64 bytes from 205.152.59.17: icmp_seq=4 ttl=246 time=52.366 ms
64 bytes from 205.152.59.17: icmp_seq=5 ttl=246 time=35.337 ms
64 bytes from 205.152.59.17: icmp_seq=6 ttl=246 time=45.246 ms
64 bytes from 205.152.59.17: icmp_seq=7 ttl=246 time=98.008 ms
64 bytes from 205.152.59.17: icmp_seq=8 ttl=246 time=41.228 ms
64 bytes from 205.152.59.17: icmp_seq=9 ttl=246 time=30.168 ms

--- mail.bellsouth.net ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 30.073/71.529/177.494 ms

In other words, I can "see" the bellsouth outgoing server but not .Mac's.(for the reasons I described in my earlier post, I can only assume). If you are in the same situation, then you need to do the following:
1) You realize that you have an email with bellsouth simply by virtue of having them as an ISP. The email address is <youbellsouthISPusername>@bellsouth.net. Your password is the same password you use to log in to bellsouth internet service.

2) You may as well go ahead and set up a new account for your bellsouth email. BOTH the incoming and outgoing servers are mail.lig.bellsouth.net. So create a new account (called "Bellsouth" or whatever). Set the email address to <yourusername>@bellsouth.net. Set the incoming server to mail.lig.bellsouth.net. Set the username to your ISP account name, set the password to your ISP password.

3) Set the outgoing server by choosing "Add new server" in the outgoing server dropdown and entering outgoing server name (mail.lig.bellsouth.net). Authentication type is "Password" and here you reenter the same username and password in you had entered for the incoming mail server.

4) Now, save that account and switch back to your .Mac account. As I mentioned in my previous post, you can now choose bellsouth as your outgoing mail server for your .Mac account. You should now be able to send from your .Mac email via your bellsouth outgoing mail server.

Two more points.
If you don't want to set up your bellsouth email account, just start at step 3, add the bellsouth outgoing server and set your .mac account to use that (for outgoing only -- don't forget).
If you do start at step 1 and set up your bellsouth account, you can expect to immediately get a coupla emails in in ("Welcome to Bellsouth.net" type stuff). Never hurts to setup that Bellsouth account .... its free with the ISP (actually you get 5 with bellsouth if you want them) and you can test your .Mac account's sending ability by sending a test message to yourself at the bellsouth address.

Whew !!! Hope this post wasn't too disorganized. Best of luck !! I had the same problem a few months ago and it took a long time and a lot of forum searching to find out what the heck was going on and why my .mac had suddenly quit sending.

Let us know how it goes.

Scoates · Sep 19, 2004, 10:23 AM

Thank you for all the advice!
I understand what you are saying, and when I did set up my new Bellsouth accounte-mail through .mac I did recieve all my mail from that account. I still cannot send mail, though. My outgoing server for both accounts was set to (mail.lig.bellsouth.net:[email protected]) Is that the right name for the outgoing server?Should my e-mail adress be attached to the outgoing server name like it is?

Krusty · Sep 19, 2004, 04:48 PM

Originally posted by Scoates:
Thank you for all the advice!
I understand what you are saying, and when I did set up my new Bellsouth accounte-mail through .mac I did recieve all my mail from that account. I still cannot send mail, though. My outgoing server for both accounts was set to (mail.lig.bellsouth.net:[email protected]) Is that the right name for the outgoing server?Should my e-mail adress be attached to the outgoing server name like it is?

ahhh .. you are almost there. I failed to mention that the mail servers usernames are actually JUST your username without the "@bellsouth.net" part that is on your email address and ISP login. So, you should edit the outgoing server to be just "coat163" (I think the incoming server will actually work either way .. in my setup, both incoming and outgoing are just my username without "@bellsouth.net"

I think that'll do the trick for you