[boboman]

I recently upgraded to office 2007 and was trying to set up my email in Outlook. Did was I was supposed to do and it received mail as it should with no problem, but I cannot send mail. Have an account with bellsouth.net and talked with their folks and redid all the settings, but had the same results. The error is something to the effect 'can't connect to the smtp mail server'.

I checked the microsoft web page and couldn't find anything applicable or anything that I had not tried.

I have my incoming/outgoing ports set to the default, 110/25.

[JonathanAnon]

Are you sure that it is not being blocked by you antivirus software

You could test it out manually by opening the command prompt, and running telnet (if you are using XP), like

TELNET <SERVERNAME> 25

and see if it gets a response or just times out.

[boboman]

not sure I used the right format, I used assuming mail.bellsouth.net is the server name........

telnet mail.bellsouth.net 25 and it just timed out

I looked at my anti virus and can't see anything related to outgoing email or outgoing anything.

still trying

[JonathanAnon]

It times out for me too on port 25. I can however access it on port 110, so it's definitely the POP server. I googled it and it seems that the mail.bellsouth.net server is both SMTP and POP server for that service provider. I would guess that either the SMTP is offline or else you are meant to use a different port for SMTP. Try it tomorrow and if it is still not working ring them and ask them.

[boboman]

I tried again and it still fails -- this is getting frustrating...... so far I have
- disabled my anti virus scan for email -- no effect
- reloaded all of my account information
- try telnet mail.bellsouth.net 25 and still it just times out
- looked at all my isp connections - found nothing strange enough to cause this
- can use the webmail without any problem

still need some help

[Rich-M]

It is not so easy to find in Outlook 2007, but I would bet you need to go into Account Settings, Change, More Settings, Outgoing Server, and make sure that "My server requires authentication" is checked.

[boboman]

I found it and tried all three options without success

[DoubleHelix]

The exact text of the error might help. Also, do you have any type of firewall or other Internet security software enabled? That can interfere with connections.

[boboman]

finally got this to work-- apparently several ISP (I have Comcast) have blocked port 25 in an effort to control spam. This was one of those silent updates that my ISP made that have lots of consequences. Thanks for the help.

[Mom2Bryan]

I'm having the same problem! What exactly did you to to fix yours?

[boboman]

I have two ISP's (Bellsouth and Comcast) for two different home. Comcast, and many others ISP, block the outgoing port, #25. So I set up Outlook to look for my incoming POP server, port 110 to mail.bellsouth.net and the outgoing POP server port 587, smpt.comcast.net. Naturally with the appropriate passwords and ids. Lightbulb didn't go off until I started seaching on port 25 - lots of stuff out there.

Good luck

[Mom2Bryan]

Ok....I did what you said and it works! So we're just using the comcast outgoing server to send bellsouth emails?

[boboman]

sounds like a pretty dumb plan but it works --

go figure