Access Eircom.net POP3 with Gmail etc ?

mayto · 31-03-2015 2:46pm #1

A friend has an old eircom.net pop email account for his business and at present can only view emails on a pc in the office. If an email is viewed on one pc the other pc cannot see it then. Can Gmail be setup to recieve pop3 mails and then show the eircom.net email address when replying? Or what do you think would be the best setup to allow users to view mails when out of the office and be seen by all users.
Thanks

Alun · 31-03-2015 2:53pm

Is he sure it's a POP only account? Many eircom accounts have been migrated over to a newer system that supports IMAP. An easy way to tell is to access the account via a browser, and see whether you get the cranky old-fashioned webmail interface, or the new fancy zimbra based one.

mayto · 31-03-2015 3:04pm

I loggen into the webmail just there and could see 1 incoming mail but it dissappeared from the webmail when it was looked at on the office pc.

Alun · 31-03-2015 3:29pm

Did the screen look like this? If so then it's definitely a POP only account. You can ask eircom to 'upgrade' it to the new system, but it might take a while.

If it didn't look like this then you've already been upgraded. If so then it's simply a case of getting everyone to use webmail or changing the configuration of any PC's accessing the account via Outlook, Thunderbird or whatever to use IMAP instead of POP.

mayto · 31-03-2015 4:30pm

Its the newer system now, it looked like what you posted when I last checked a few months ago. Assuming imap is available do I just need to add account settings like below from eircom forum to outlook? Can emails be viewed then on all pc's that log in like a gmail account?

IMAP Account settings'

Name: your choice here

Address: yourname@eircom.net

Description: your choice here

'Incomming Mail Server'

Host Name: webmail.eircom.net

User Name: yourname@eircom.net

Password: your password for loging on to Eircom webmail

'Outgoing Mail Server'

SMTP: mail1.eircom.net

'Advanced'

Use SSL = ON

Authentication = Password

Server Port: 993

Alun · 31-03-2015 5:16pm

That should work, yes.

You have to make certain every PC accessing the account is converted to IMAP otherwise the first PC to log on using POP will suck all the emails off the server and they won't be available to others. Either that or just use the webmail client which is pretty decent now.

Also if there are any existing emails that were downloaded to the PC that is currently using POP that you want to save and make available to everyone, set up the IMAP account as a new account and then copy the emails from the old to the new account.

mayto · 31-03-2015 5:51pm

Thanks for that, will give it a go later in week.

mayto · 01-04-2015 9:36am

I disabled the pop3 account and added the imap settings last night but had problems. When I pressed send/recieve in outlook 2007 I would get a connection error and go offline. Sometimes it would recive and send emails but it was still saying connection error before it would actually go online again and work. I forgot to change the default server port settings to try that. Does anyone know the imap settings I posted above are ok as I cannot find any more info. The username for the pop account is not an email address but I have to use the email address as username for imap to connect to the servers, is that normal?

Alun · 01-04-2015 10:08am

I've just tried it out in Outlook 2007 with an account I have and it worked fine with those settings. It should also work with the default IMAP port of 143 and no connection security, as well as port 993 with SSL.

Could you post (or PM me) screenshots of the two menus, both the standard settings one and the "Advanced" tab of the "More Settings ..." one? Obscure any sensitive information first though.

Also what does it say when you try the "Test Account Settings ..." option in the settings menu?

mayto · 01-04-2015 10:38am

I might not get to test it until later today but will give it another go. I was also getting synchronising error 0x800ccc0e when I think I was trying to copy pop mails to the new imap account. Its on a win 8.1 pc, do you think firewall software/hardware could block ports if differnt with imap.

Alun · 01-04-2015 11:28am

mayto wrote: »

I might not get to test it until later today but will give it another go. I was also getting synchronising error 0x800ccc0e when I think I was trying to copy pop mails to the new imap account. Its on a win 8.1 pc, do you think firewall software/hardware could block ports if differnt with imap.

Shouldn't be a problem, but you can test standard IMAP access really easily with telnet in a command prompt. You may have to install the telnet client first though via Control Panel > "Turn Windows features on or off".

Just open up a command prompt and type "telnet webmail.eircom.net 143". If you get a reply of "* OK IMAP4 ready" you're good to go.

mayto · 02-04-2015 9:22am

I tried again yesterday and still having problems. I got "OK IMAP ready" with putty but it keeps disconnecting. When I test account settings it might connect fine but then fails if I try it again straight after. It usually says " Log onto incoming mail server (IMAP): General authentication failed. None of the authentication methods supported by your IMAP server (if any) are supported on this computer". It might get mails fine If I press send/recieve but usually "webmail is now in offline mode" . When I test pop account settings it will connect fine every time I try.

Alun · 02-04-2015 11:03am

FWIW I've been seeing some odd problems today with it too. Connecting with telnet, sometimes it'd just disconnect within a few seconds barely giving me a chance to enter any commands (not that it's easy with IMAP compared to POP mind you.) In Outlook, sometimes it would connect and other times not, but at the time of writing this message it seems to be working OK. It's not unknown for eircom's mail servers to throw a wobbly now and then, maybe you were just unlucky?

By the way, one way to ensure you get the "General authentication failed ..." message is to have "Require logon using Secure Password Authentication(SPA)" enabled in the account settings, so make sure you have that unchecked.

ct5amr2ig1nfhp · 02-04-2015 11:08am

Why not leave it as POP3 and set outlook to "leave a copy of the message on the server"?

Alun · 02-04-2015 11:14am

Chad Flabby Vow wrote: »

Why not leave it as POP3 and set outlook to "leave a copy of the message on the server"?

That would be an option certainly. IMAP give you more options with folders to organise emails though.

ct5amr2ig1nfhp · 02-04-2015 11:23am

I had forgotten that actually!

Alun wrote: »

That would be an option certainly. IMAP give you more options with folders to organise emails though.

mayto · 02-04-2015 4:19pm

I tried it with SPA turned off alright but no change. I am just going to leave it as pop3 and leave mails on the server. Thanks for the help anyway

Alun · 02-04-2015 5:18pm

mayto wrote: »

I tried it with SPA turned off alright but no change. I am just going to leave it as pop3 and leave mails on the server. Thanks for the help anyway

No problem. It's still a bit odd that it doesn't work for you. I use a couple of eircom IMAP accounts with Thunderbird every day with no problems, but not with Outlook.

ct5amr2ig1nfhp · 02-04-2015 5:23pm

A couple people in work today were having issues with their Eircom mail yesterday and today. Perhaps their server is having some issues?

cormie · 17-04-2017 8:30pm

Hey folks, I've been using my eircom address with thunderbird for over ten years now using pop. I'm finally going to be migrating to imap after only recently realising the advantages, especially using a smart phone and wanting to keep everything in sync.

Does anyone know the mailbox size limit with eircom? I wondering will it even hold all my mail if I throw it all into imap from thunderbird (considering its all been downloaded locally via pop). I've had the odd server issue with eircom and although I've been using my eircom address for all my main personal stuff, I'm thinking to combine it to my Gmail and start using Gmail as my primary mail address as it's probably more reliable?

I know it's possible to have Gmail manage another email address by adding the account and then you can set the "from" address to this permanently too.

If I let Gmail manage my eircom account, can I choose what address to send "from" on the fly? Can I then link the Gmail account via imap to thunderbird so I get my @gmail and my @eircom emails to the same account on thunderbird?

Will I always be relying on the eircom servers, or do the Gmail servers completely take over? I'm guessing I'll need to really on the eircom servers to send the mail to Gmail in the first place?

Maybe this is all too complicated and I should just keep them separate though.

Any feedback would be great!

Alun · 17-04-2017 10:39pm

My eir webmail max mailbox size is 5GB.

cormie · 17-04-2017 11:21pm

Alun wrote: »

My eir webmail max mailbox size is 5GB.

Thanks Alun, not much compared to 15gb of Gmail. I wonder if you set it up with Gmail, are the mails still stored on the eircom server, or Gmail handles everything?

Access Eircom.net POP3 with Gmail etc ?

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