Thunderbird: Receives but won't send emails. Help please!

[CD3660]

I am brand new to Mac having converted just a week ago, so I would very much appreciate an idiot's guide to the problem I have.

I have installed Thunderbird to use 2 email accounts: AOL and Hotmail. To facilitate this I have also installed the following add ons:

Webmail 1.2.3.
Webmail - AOL/Netscape 1.2.2
Webmail - Hotmail

Thunderbird collects mail from both accounts without any difficulty but I cannot send mail through either account and simply get the error message "the message could not be sent because connecting to the smtp server local host failed"

Can anyone tell me (in simple terms) how I might solve this problem? I would really appreciate any advice.

 

[Eraserhead]

Did this work under Windows with Thunderbird (though with different Webmail accessing software)?

Have you tried Apple Mail rather than Thunderbird?

 

[CD3660]

I never used Thunderbird on my windows pc - only got into it as a result of discovering Firefox which I love.

I did try Apple Mail and had similar problems, receiving but not sending. In fact I found it even more frustrating than Thunderbird to set up.

 

[swiftaw]

Who is your ISP? Many of the ISP's require you to use their SMTP servers to send mail. Try changing your outgoing mail settings to those of your ISP's SMTP server and see what happens.

 

[CD3660]

My ISP is AOL and I have tried setting the outgoing server according to the details that they provided, i.e. smtp.aol.com which doesn't work, and also (following the instructions of the add on IIRC) to webmail - localhost. No luck either way!

 

[swiftaw]

http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/imap/

 

[eluk]

Did you use Port 587 rather than the default Port 25?

 

[CD3660]

Many thanks for the link - I'll go and have a read now.

Did you use Port 587 rather than the default Port 25?

Yes, I tried that but without success.

 

[Eraserhead]

I never used Thunderbird on my windows pc - only got into it as a result of discovering Firefox which I love.

Did you use Outlook/Outlook Express then?

 

[clevin]

does the problem persist when you change a network environment? sometimes, some networks just won't work with smtp server.

 

[CD3660]

Did you use Outlook/Outlook Express then?

No , I just accessed AOL directly as I had their software on my PC, and did the same with Hotmail via MSN.

I was hoping to tidy things up and get & send my emails from a single location.

 

[CD3660]

does the problem persist when you change a network environment? sometimes, some networks just won't work with smtp server.

Not sure, I've only used my home network so far - wireless using an Airport Extreme linked to a Netgear wireless router/modem.

 

[clevin]

Not sure, I've only used my home network so far - wireless using an Airport Extreme linked to a Netgear wireless router/modem.

maybe try a direct cable connection to your router?

ps. this is my setting in TB, and it works fine
but u do need to make sure u are using the aol smtp server from server settings, since TB allows you to pick and choose outgoing server for each account.

 

[CD3660]

clevin, many thanks for posting those screen images - I'll give it a go.