Mail encryption?

[Normand]

Hi everyone,

A hard question!

I had an old PowerMac G4 two processors... It died after 9 years of very good work.
With this machine (Os X 10.4.11) I was able to send emails with Apple Mail, a software that I like very much.
To do that I had to configure the smtp mail server to use the port 465 with SSL of my service provider.

Now I have a brand new iMac (OsX 10.5.7) top of the line. A charm!
But I cannot send emails with Mail anymore.
I did the same configuration as before: port 456 SSL etc...
Everything seems OK but it does not work.

I tried the email software named Thunderbird (BTW a nice things), performed the same configuration and it works very well! I can send emails.
Then there is something that Mail and Thunderbird do differently and it should be adjustable otherwise than having to switch to another software. But how???

I contacted my service provider and he told me that when I try to send emails withs Mail, their server sees my sending but it refuses to establish the connection because the encryption of Mail is not standard and them, they use only the standard encryption. He told me that there must be a way to configure Mail to use the standard encryption. I searched very hard everywhere for a solution to this problem because I must absolutely be able to send emails and I would not have to switch to a different mailer.

Could someone explain what is that encryption issue and how I could configure Mail to make it work properly?

Thank you very VERY much.

Normand

[Turboladdade]

He is probably referring to one of these:

Try all four and see if one of them works. The menu pictured above is found in Mail -> Preferences -> Accounts -> Account Information -> Outoing Mail Server (SMTP) -> Edit Server List -> Advanced.

Let us know if that helps or if you continue to have problems. There hasn't been any changes in Mail from Tiger to Leopard that would cause this, so it's definitely a settings issue.

[Normand]

Thank you for your fast response.

I tried all these possibilties but unfortunately nothing worked but, on the other hand, Thunderbird is still working.
I looked through all the possible settings of Thunderbird to figure out what I could choose but it seems that Thunderbird does not offer these settings options.

As you said, since Mail has not changed, it should work but it does not?????

Thank you.

Normand

[Turboladdade]

I noticed above that you state two different SSL ports, 465 and 456... perhaps a typo entered in your Mail.app settings?

What mail host is this?

Also, to verify it's not some setting somewhere you accidentally changed and forgot about, try going to System Preferences and creating a new user account on your computer. Log into that account, and setup the untouched Mail.app on that account with the default settings and see if it works there. Report any findings back to us.

If, somehow this does work, you can copy the Mail preferences files from that account to your new account.

Also, have you considered taking the hard drive from your G4 tower, putting it into an external enclosure, and copying the Mail settings (and mail messages) directly?

In fact, you might even want to check if your *dead* G4 will at least start up in Firewire Target Disk mode. Do this by booting it up and immediately holding down "T" until you see a FireWire icon bouncing around on a screen. If this works, you can connect it directly to your iMac with a FireWire cable and access all the files on it, including your previously working Mail settings.

[Normand]

Dear Turboladdade,

You were right on the good track.

Now everything work fine. What I did was to take the preferences of Mail on the disk of my dead computer and put them in the new one. (Yes the first thing I did when my computer died has been to extract the hard disc an clone it). Doing that (using the previous prefs) allowed me to see the differences in the settings (again you were right, it was a matter of settings). Then I saw that among the four choices you suggested me in your former message (Mail -> Preferences -> Accounts -> Account Information -> Outoing Mail Server (SMTP) -> Edit Server List -> Advanced) what I must do is to choose the fifth one which is "None". On his side my Service provider looked at it and told me that finally it was not an eccryption problem.

Now everything work and I am very happy.

Thank you very much and long live to Info Mac ))

Normand

[Turboladdade]

Glad to hear you solved your problem and that Info-Mac is still useful to you after all these years

[liquida]

Does this mean the solution to the "wrong encryption" problem was in fact disabling encryption altogether?

[Normand]

In a sense yes.
Among the possibilities (see the post from Turboladdade with the picture) I have had to choose "none" to make it work. What lead me into error was that at the first start of Mail the "Assistant" proposed me to use a name and a password, what I did. As far as I remember there was no possibility to choose "none" and again as far as I remember , it was not possible to avoid using the Assistant. When I replaced the prefs by my former prefs I saw that "None" was settled.

I thank very much Info-Mac and Turboladdade for a so helpful concern.

Normand