When I travel to countries such as China and try to send emails through
Outlook 2003 and Windows XP from hotels or offices, I sometimes am unable to
send.  Meanwhile, receiving is fine.  Also, using the webmail provided by my
USA email provider works fine.  So the problem is limited to sending emails.

My email provider uses ports 25, 80 and 3535 to receive outgoing messages
from Outlook, and I periodically toggle through those settings on Outlook,
but depending on the Hotel, etc., none of these work.  The other Outlook
settings are exactly what are required by my USA email provider. 

When I try to send email, I get an Outlook error message stating:  "Outlook
could not log onto the outgoing mail server (SMTP).  The problem could be the
server name, your server might require authentication, or your server might
not support SSL.  Verify authentication and SSL settings under More
Settings."  I get the same error message when sending a test message within
Outlook.

However, despite this error message, all these settings are correct since I
can send fine from home using same settings, and other hotels and places in
China, etc. work, only certain places have problems and not others.

I'm not an expert, but perhaps some of these hotels, etc. are blocking these
3 ports, although I'm not sure why they would do this.  Maybe there is
another explanation like the transmission is taking too long and it times
out.  But then I'm not sure why incoming messages work fine, but not outgoing
messages.  Maybe there is another explanation.

My email provider in USA is not able to solve this and points to problems
within the originating country I am in.

Using webmail is not convenient because:

1.  once incoming email is downloaded into Outlook and is erased from
server, replying to a particular message through webmail is not possible.  
Also, I don't want to have to adjust the "erase" setting each time I travel.
2.  address book is not easily accessible through webmail
3.  messages sent through webmail are not shown in Outlook sent folder
4.  etc.

In short, I want to be able to send through Outlook worldwide, not have to
use webmail in certain places.


My question is whether there is any workaround on this, either through
Outlook / Windows XP or perhaps a separate utility which somehow routes the
outgoing message throuth a Port not blocked in China, etc. but then reroutes
it back to a Port through which my USA email provider can accept the outgoing
message for relay to the recipient.

Maybe I'm grasping at straws, but it is extremely time consuming and
inconvenient to have my entire email "infrastructure" on Outlook, but then
having to use webmail in certain places even though I have my computer with
me and have everything at my disposal to send and receive through Outlook,
except the networking is failing me.

Any suggestions for workarounds are appreciated. 

I have a number of email accounts, so I would like to avoid laborious
resetting of settings every time I go abroad only to have to reset them again
when I return home, but if that is the only answer, I will have to bite the
bullet.

Thanks for your assistance and suggestions.

Many ISPs block sending email using another ISPs mail servers to prevent
relay of spam, etc. Its not an uncommon practice.

You can check with your home ISP and see if they offer SMTP Authenication on
an alternate port. My ISP, Cox, does as do many others.

If your home ISP does not offer SMTP Auth and SSL protected email you can
setup a Gmail account, configure Gmail to fetch email from your ISP and to
send email. Gmail uses SMTP Auth and SSL. It works quite well. I used to use
that as a work around until Cox got its act together.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,21281800

Remember you need to setup a Gmail account first and enable POP3 access
first and configure Outlook on your laptop to use the Gmail account.

Gmail help...

http://mail.google.com/support/

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Thanks for 2 excellent suggestions.

I'm a bit unclear about using Gmail.  Once I set up the Gmail account, can I
confgure it (and Outlook) so Gmail is just a conduit, ie, I compose the email
in Outlook and hit Send and send it using an Email Account in Outlook
configured to route through Gmail, or do I have to use the Gmail webmail
application to compose the email with the main advantage being only that my
return address is shown as my non-Gmail address.

The former is what I would want to do.  I don't want to use webmail to
compose outgoing messages if I can avoid it for the reasons in my OP.

YPOPs is a program which does something simiilar by using Yahoo as a conduit
to send and receive messages composed and to be received on Outlook, but the
message is sent with the Yahoo return address.  Anyway, YPOPs apparently is
not working anymore due to changes made by Yahoo.

But I digress.  Please indicate if the Gmail route will enable me still to
compose and receive in Outlook, which is my aim.

Meanwhile, I will contact my ISP regarding your other suggestion, but I am
not hopeful.

Your suggestions are much appreciated.

Show quoteHide quote

Hi
Maybe this can Help,
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=13273
Jack (MS, MVP-Networking)

Show quoteHide quote

That's the way it will work.

1. Sign up and get a Gmail account.

2. Configure Gmail for POP3. See the link Jack pointed you to.

3. Setup Gmail to fetch email from your ISP.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21288

4. Setup Gmail to send email using your ISP email address. See the "Send
Mail As" function.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=22370&topic=12896

5. Setup Outlook to send/receive email via Gmail.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=86374

The only thing strange is that recipients will get email via the Gmail
account saying something to the effect "sending on behalf of" which will be
your regular ISP email address.

Good luck...

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Thank you Al and Jack.  Your Gmail workaround is right on!!  It has saved me
significant time and heartburn.

I agree with your "on behalf of" comment.  It would be nice to be rid of
that so the Gmail relaying would be completely transparent.

Also, my email provider in USA advised me that they do indeed use SSL on the
same incoming and outgoing ports as Gmail.  They didn't say anything about
SMTP Auth.

Test MS Outlook email using their SSL worked fine, but my outgoing emails
still got the same error message as their non-SSL ports.

Any idea why Gmail goes through but not my USA Email provider using their
SSL ports?

Also, by curiosity (and your answer might help me figure out future
problems), why do, as you say, "Many ISPs block sending email using another
ISPs mail servers to prevent
relay of spam, etc.", but they don't block the SSL ports?  It's great that
they don't but why not?

Thanks again for your help.  If you can help me figure out how to get my
provider's SSL ports to work, that would be a big bonus.

Show quoteHide quote

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