Thunderbird: Cannot send email but can read emails

[Kevin J. Cummings]

Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
> Craig White wrote:
> | Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
> | > I cannot figure out how to get thunderbird to send
> | > out email.
> | > 
> | > Please advise?
> | ----
> | Edit (menu) => Account Settings => Outgoing Server SMTP
> | 
> | Select the setup you have and click 'Edit'
> | 
> | By default, Thunderbird uses 'authentication' on 
> | sending...this can be a
> | problem with some setups.
> 
> What is odd, it seems, that when you create an IMAP
> account, in the "Server Settings" area, there is a
> "Security Settings" section there where authenication
> can be defined, however, there is also a "Outgoing
> Server (SMTP)" section that has a "Security And
> Authenication" section which duplicates it, ie the
> "None", "TLS, if available", ...
> 
> What is not clear to me in the "Outgoing Server (SMTP)"
> section, "Use name and password", how do you enter both
> the username and password in this single field? What is
> the delimiter? A space between the two?

Enter just your user name in this field.  The passowrd gets prompted for 
when it is needed, and it gives you the option to remember it as well.

> I have configured my Exchange server to allow all local
> only relays, and I even see the log entries identifying
> connections, and there appears in it, no errors as to
> failed deliveries.  It seems very transparent.
> 
> I have no clue where the problem is, I get no returned
> failed delivery return messages.  It is very transparent,
> or so it seems.
> 
> I wonder if I should use F8's sendmail for Outbound
> deliveries on the F8 system, providing I have the option
> to bypass the IMAP account's Outgoing server settings.

IMAP is an incoming server protocol only.  Its for reading email, not 
sending it.  Thunderbird is trying to configure an outgoing server for 
you to use should you wish to reply to an email in your IMAP mailboxes.

> I remembered why I abandoned Thunderbird and it was
> because I could not figure out how to make outbound
> non-local deliveries.

Strange, I've been using Thunderbird (and Mozilla Email before that) for
at least 10 years now.  The biggest problem configuring your SMTP is 
allowing it to accept email from non-local systems (by default, sendmail 
only accepts email from local hosts on Fedora systems).  This is a 
separate problem from configuring Thunderbird, as that is a problem with 
sendmail, not Thunderbird.  So, if you are running an email server on a 
different system than you are running Thunderbird on, it gets complicated.

The last time I configured my Thunderbird, at work, for outgoing email, 
I had to connect directly to the company's outgoing SMTP server for 
outgoing emails.  We also had to beg the IT folks to keep the 
Exchange/IMAP port open for us to use (unsupported, of course) to be 
able to read emails with something else besides Outlook.

> Sigh....  it is going to be a long day.
> 
> Dan

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)