iPhone: .Mac mail can not send emails over WiFi - other accounts are fine

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Level 1

25 points

iPhone: .Mac mail can not send emails over WiFi - other accounts are fine

When I try to send an email using .Mac from the iPhone i get this error:
____
Cannot Send Mail

The connection to the server "smtp.mac.com" failed
____

This error only happens over WiFi and not when on the edge network.

I configured my .Mac account on the iPhone by choosing ".Mac" and continuing the set up process within the Settings of iPhone. It was not synced from iTunes. There are limited options to edit or configure when you have the iPhone set up a .Mac email account. For example you do not have access to edit smtp settings with a .Mac account.

I have ATTYahoo DSL with the new Airport Extreme (n) base station at home. However this issue also occurs on other WiFi networks i have tested. My MacBook Pro has no issue sending .Mac email over the same WiFi.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Jul 4, 2007 3:38 PM

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Answer 1

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Madhatter17

Level 1

25 points

Jul 4, 2007 3:44 PM in response to John Gray1

What I ended up having to do is go in to my SMTP settings for my .Mac account on my laptop and change the outgoing port from 25 to 587. Then I selected all the options for Mail syncing in iTunes, applied them, and manually ran the sync one more time for good measure.

When all was said and done it allowed me to use my .Mac SMTP setting with Cox high speed internet at home (something I hadn't been able to do before), and over the EDGE network while at work. It seems to be working great so far (it's been all of 2 days... grin)

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Answer 2

teb

Level 1

43 points

Jul 4, 2007 4:13 PM in response to Madhatter17

This is really interesting. I have cox out in Arizona and Time Warner in NY. In AZ I can't use the email program I have to go to .mac on the web. It is soooo annoying. So this also fixes your desktop? I wonder if the change will mess up my settings when in NY

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Answer 3

Jul 4, 2007 5:24 PM in response to teb

This is really interesting. I have cox out in Arizona
and Time Warner in NY. In AZ I can't use the email
program I have to go to .mac on the web. It is soooo
annoying. So this also fixes your desktop? I wonder
if the change will mess up my settings when in NY

Yeah, it drove me crazy to have to use smtp.cox.west.net or whatever it was, then have to switch to smtp.mac.com (I think those are the settings, I'm at work right now). When I switched back to .mac, and changed my port in the advanced settings, like everyone has said here on the forums, I was able to send mail without using the Cox settings...

The next part of the test was to sync the iPhone using those settings and send a message using WiFi (success!) and EDGE (success!). I think that it should allow you to leave just the .Mac settings anywhere you go for both your laptop and your iPhone, but don't quote me on that... grin

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Answer 4

John Gray1 Author

Level 1

25 points

Jul 6, 2007 10:55 AM in response to Madhatter17

Thanks for the response. I will try deleting the .Mac account that was set up in the phone and make it sync the .Mac account settings from iTunes. When I did it this way originaly, .Mac would frequently reject my user account at as invalid.

I am using all Apple hardware in 'normal' configurations and their products and services are not working together seamlessly.

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Answer 5

Nathan C

Level 5

6,260 points

Jul 6, 2007 11:16 AM in response to Madhatter17

Madhatter17,

This article discusses the port number change for .Mac:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75124

This article, especially in the footnote, has more information on why Port 25 is blocked by many internet service providers:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305634

Hope this helps explain,

Nathan C.

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Answer 6

John Gray1 Author

Level 1

25 points

Jul 6, 2007 4:05 PM in response to Nathan C

Madhatter, I tried your advice. For whatever reason the iPhone would not sync with my iTunes and get the updated configuration for my .Mac account. It simply would not transfer over that account even though it was check-marked to sync. I tried three times and gave up. Faster to just set up a new account within the phone.

I manually set up a new account (not using the .Mac option in the phone) on the phone and configured the outgoing mail server to use port 587 as suggested in this forum.

I am now able to send email out via Edge and Wifi connections.

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Answer 7

iDawn

Level 1

8 points

Jul 6, 2007 7:39 PM in response to Madhatter17

Thank you. I have never been able to use the mac mail outgoing SMTP server until I made the '25 to 587' change. I've been using my old earthlink server for years. This fixed that issue both on my Mini and the iPhone, EDGE and WiFi, though my WiFi was working fine with my normal earthlink server at home. Have not tried my iPhone in the outside world yet, but it seems like this solution should work anywhere.

Mini, MacBook Pro, iPhone Mac OS X (10.4.10)

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Answer 8

iDawn

Level 1

8 points

Jul 7, 2007 5:42 PM in response to iDawn

OK, just to dispel the impression that I am an idiot....

I omitted from my last post the fact that I changed to using gmail instead of Earthlink for my outgoing mail server so I could use the 587 port. I got thinking today that Earthlink must have some support on this topic, so I went to their support page and learned that they now have an SMTP outgoing mail server that I have not been using. It uses port 587. So I switched to that earthlink SMTP outgoing mail server and all is well with iPhone on EDGE and WiFi, and I did not have to keep the gmail account on there that I set up for this purpose.

Which is good because gmail and iPhone are having 'issues' as you can seeon other forums.

When all was said and done, if I had switched over to the Earthlinl SMTP server months ago as Earthlink no doubt told me to, I would not have had even one problem with my iPhone connections and would have saved a lot of troubleshooting time. My bad. Anyway, any Earthlink users might want to look into this also if they are having troubles.

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