Email guide for Mac OS X (10.0-10.4)
Before you begin
It's essential that you have the following information to hand:
- Your e-mail address. For example jsmith@MyHostedDomain.com. NB: everything before the @ should be lower case
- Your assigned e-mail account password.
If you don't know all of this information, then speak to someone in your organization who will be able to advise you. Failing that, speak to us.
Remember - you will be substituting your domain name and e-mail address details for those used in the examples below.
The great news is that all Covisp.net website hosting customers have access to their own password-protected web page (Email Admin) where they can create, manage, and delete e-mail addresses. Also, all email addresse are availble as POP3 or IMAP accounts, although we recommend IMAP for most users. So if you are the proud owner of a domain name hosted with Covisp, you can create a new email account on the server whenever you like.
Choose your Method
METHOD 1 - For more experienced users
If you know your e-mail address (account name) and password, and you know that this account has definitely been setup on the server, then here's all the additional information you need to configure your e-mail software correctly:
- Your incoming (POP3/IMAP) mail server is: mail.covisp.net.
- Your outgoing (SMTP) mail server is exactly the same as your incoming server.
- Your "Outgoing Mail Server" does not require authentication; as long as you have successfully logged in to check your mail the server is smart enough to know who you are. However, you should use a secure IMAP connection for checking your mail, and these directions assume this setting.
- If you have trouble sending mail, check the Troubleshooting E-mail Problems section.
METHOD 2 - Step-by-step with screen shots
- Open Mail
- Open up Mail's preferences (Command-,)
- Select "Accounts"
- To add a new mail account, click on the "+" button, and then fill in the Account Information with your info. If you are using a self-managed IMAP server you MUST include your complete email address in the "User name" field.
- You can either use your own existing "Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP)" or you can add the mail.covisp.net server by choosing "Add Server..." from the popup menu. If you need to change the port for sending mail (as outlined in the Troubleshooting section), this is where you will change it.
- Now, select the advanced tab and make sure "Use SSL" is checked and that the IMAP Path Prefix is blank
- You may see the following screen when you first check mail. This is normal as the mail server currently has a "self-signed" certificate.
- Click "Show Certificate" and ensure that it matches the following:
- If the data matches, then the certificate is valid and you need to add it to your computer.
- Click on the certificate icon, hold down the OPTION key, and DRAG the icon to the desktop.
- Find the icon on the desktop and double click it.
- Choose "X509Anchors" from the popup list (NB: there is no space in "X509Anchors") to permanently add the key for the mail server to your system keychain. You should never be asked about the certificate again.
If after all this work you still can't send/receive e-mail successfully, speak to the Technology Rep. in your organization (referring them to this page). Still no joy? We're here to help.
Troubleshooting E-mail Problems
Due to the massive amounts of abuse from spammers, an increasing number of ISP's are disabling the ability to send mail through someone else's SMTP server. If you receive an error message when attempting to use your "Outgoing SMTP" server, it probably means your ISP has denied access to "third party relaying". Your best choice is to use your ISP's email servers for sending outbound mail, however, this may not always be possible, so you may be able to solve this problem with the following. Open your preferences:
- Find your Account Information and choose "Server Settings" from the popup menu.
- Change the "Outgoing Mail (SMTP)" server setting's port from 25 to 587. In nearly all cases this will allow you to send mail via the covisp.net mailserver.