Thunderbird and Multiple SMTP Servers
I use my laptop both at home and at work. I choose not to send personal mail at work using my employer’s SMTP server. Call me suspicious or secretive. Until recently, I was able to use my SMTP server for this domain to send mail from both home and work without having to change any settings. But my broadband provider at home recently started blocking SMTP traffic to servers not on their network. Which means I have to have two SMTP servers. Which means that every time I go home and try to send a message, I get an error message saying that I can’t connect to the SMTP server. Likewise, when I get to work and try to send my first message of the day, I get a similar message. Which irritates me a great deal because each time this happens, I mutter under my breath about my stupid (not really stupid — what they’ve done actually makes sense) broadband provider and do the five or six clicks and 80 or 90 characters I have to type to change my SMTP server. Finally, after a few weeks of being on the verge of going postal thanks to this really quite minor inconvenience, I looked for a solution. If you’re having the same problem, go here for an explanation of how to set up multiple SMTP servers and here for a nifty Thunderbird plugin that lets you add a button to toggle back and forth between mail servers. This’ll save me mucho frustration and grants those inclined to use the post offices or to walk around underneath bell towers in my area that much more safety. For now.
Alain Muls said,
July 15, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
Hi,
I set up 3 smtp servers for each place I work. Setting the appropriate smtp server as default does not work for sending th email. I have to remove all smtp and then only setup the one for the place where I am working. I use the http://www.chuonthis.com/extensions/buttons.php
extension, but it does not work.
Any suggestions?
Tx
Markuz.net said,
July 15, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
Got the answer:
Some people have experienced trouble having set up multiple SMTP servers. Even though the settings appears to be right (Go to Tools -> Account Settings. At the bottom of the left pane (you may need to scroll down), click on Outgoing Server (SMTP).), mozilla uses to topmost server for sending e-mails. This seems to be a bug and can be fixed by removing all other SMTP servers (under Advanced button). Another solution is to change the account settings for the account that you want multiple outgoing servers for so that the SMTP server is “Always use default server”. You can get to this setting through Tools menu -> Account Settings -> Server settings (the one under your account, not the one called “Outgoing Server (SMTP)”) -> Advanced button -> SMTP tab (upper left) -> pull-down menu -> Select “Always use default server”. After this procedure, that account will always use whichever SMTP server is set as default, not necessarily the one at the top of the SMTP server list.
Jamie said,
July 15, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
I dont know if you are still looking for an answer to this problem. Here it is….
1. Tools >> Account Settings
2. Select Server Settings
3. Click “Advanced Button”
4. Select “SMTP” tab
5. On that tab, from the drop down select “always use default server”
you should be able to then switch back and forh between SMTP Servers at home, work, etc…
Hope this helps
Jamie
nbrouard said,
July 15, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
Many thanks Jamie for the tip. But it is only a workaround. I mean that each time you switch your laptop from office to home you need to set the default SMTP server Tools->Account->SMT server and set the correct outgoing SMTP server to default.
I prefer the “Evolution” approach on Linux (only) which let you set a ‘dummy’ account. A dummy account is an account with no reception, ie no POP neither IMAP server for ingoing messages, only for SMTP (outgoing). Then, to send a private mail when at work, choose the account “myprivate@foo.org (from work)” (using the SMTP at work), and when at home, the same email will be sent with the account “myprivate@foo.org” (using the SMTP at home). And reciprocally “myjob@job.com” for standard mail at work (with SMTP) at work, and “myjob@job.com (from home) (with smtp used from home).
To resume, each account have either an ingoing server (POP, IMAP) or NONE, and an outgoing server (SMTP). With two emails (work and home) and two SMTP servers, you set up 4 accounts: two standards
(1) email_at_work with smtp_at_work
(2) email_at_home with smtp_at_home;
and two dummies
(3) “signed” email_at_work but no ingoing server, smtp_at_home
(4) “signed” email_at_home, no ingoing server, smtp_at_work.
Once set, you just have to think who you will sign (home or work email) and where you are to choose the correct account among the 4.
If you have IMAP servers or if your POP accounts are separated, in the majority of cases (ie when you send and sign with a professional email from work or when you sign with a personal email from home) a “reply” will give the default correct account. Only when you cross post you will have to think where you are (home or work): you just have to choose another ‘From’ line before sending the message.
I don’t know why Thunderbird isn’t using this. It has been implemented on Evolution (Ximian) for years. I will stay on Evolution on Linux (until Thunderbird will give better services), but on a MacIntosh and on Windows the only correct Open Source mailer is Thunderbird.
stevec said,
July 15, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
I was looking for a similar capability. I have two accounts: home and work, and want to be able to route my email through whichever SMTP server happens to be available at the time that I’m sending the email, with the default being work-through-work-SMTP and home-through-home-SMTP. I just figured out how to do this with Thunderbird. (I’m currently running Thunderbird 1.0.6.)
The trick is to create multiple “identities.” Under Tools->Account Settings when you have a top-level account selected, there is a button down in the right-hand corner that says “Manage Identities.” When you create a new identity, it is associated with that account but can have different name and reply-to: fields (among other things).
The thing to understand is that a given account is tied to exactly one SMTP server. But you can have multiple identities associated with that account. So in your example above, the “email_at_work but smtp_at_home” would be a second identity attached to your _home_ account.
The way that you make use of an alternative identity is when you’re composing a new message, the “From:” line becomes a drop-down that contains all of your different identities to choose from. The default will always be the default identity for the account from which you initiated the compose.
Anyway, this solves my problem fairly neatly.
steve
Jon said,
July 15, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
Why not just have the mail client (Thunderbird) accept multiple SMTP servers. It trys server mail.work.com and if it fails, it tries mail.home.com . One of them will send your message regardless of your location (assuming you are either at work or at home) and there is no messing about with changing settings. Any reason this is bad? I’m frankly surprised neither Outlook nor Thunderbird supports it, as any professional with a laptop has problems sending email from two locations.
Ben said,
July 15, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
Here’s something to help you guys getting multiple smtp accounts in Thunderbird. Worked for me. In order to have multiple smtp servers, you probably have multiple identities within your main identity, for example, I would have my main identity, then underneath that I have 2 accounts. After setting up both of these accounts, I set up my second smtp server. Then I went to Menu–>Edit–>Preferences–>Advanced–>General, and then click on the button so that you can get to the advanced configurations; in Firefox its about:config. So same thing except you access it differently in Thunderbird. Where you can filter for items you filter for smtp. Then you look for the entry: “mail.identity.idX.smtpServer” X is the number of your identity. I found two entries:
[mail.identity.id1.smtpServer] userset to [smtp1]
[mail.identity.id2.smtpServer] userset to [smtp1]
Well, both ids refer to smtp1, so I set smtp1 in the second preference to smtp2. Everything worked - I was happy. Hope that helps you all. Hope you find it (not that I posted it for nothing)
Flopexile said,
July 15, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
I searched for SMTP in https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/ and found this one
https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2234/
It adds a button. It would be nice if thunderbird could detect based on some criterion/rule (IP of machine) what server to use. But this solution takes two mouse-clicks.