entourage not receiving emails from hotmail on my mac

Sligoaidan

I have have just registerd my .ie domain name and have just set up the email address in entourage which I have on mac I bought recently. Entourage hasnt been used before on it. I had the mac delivered with entorage, and some other software, which the suppliers installed on it for me beforehand I can quite happily send emails from my business email using entourage, but the reply or new emails I send from the hotmail account (accessed seperatly and not through entourage) arent coming though to my entourage inbox. whats the craic there? The entourage help mentions in its section about hotmail that messages from hotmail are stored on the mail server and that you can access the hotmail account folder amongst the other folders or by going to view folders list from the toolbar. Trouble is I dont have a hotmail folder in my folder list amongst my inbox outbox etc. How can I ensure that if someone emails my business email from a hotmail account that my entourage will put it in the inbox or I can at least access it?

irlrobins

Hope I'm reading this right:

You have your own email address (info@yourcompany.ie) and you want to know why if someone mails you from a hotmail address (someperson@hotmail.com) it doesn't appear in your inbox? Is that correct?

Sligoaidan

Ya I have my own domain name (.ie). I only had a hotmail account till then apart from the company email in my last job which we use entourage for sending and receiving email.

Anyway I logged in using [url]www.businessname.ie:2222[/url] and used direct admin to set up the email address: aidan@busnissname.ie
I entered the name password, set the inbox to unlimited (0), when all was ok

I opened up entourage which had been installed on my mac before it was delivered in April, but hasnt been used till yesterday. I set up the aidan@busnissname.ie in "accounts" under tools,
in the receiving mail section I used the account I.D. I was sent from the hosting company, the pop server: mail.businessname.ie
the password: used the onecame with that email detailing the pop and SMTP server names etc.

In the sending mail field I just had to put in the SMTPserver: mail.businessname.ie (this was the same as the pop server name)

I was then able to send a test email from my account in entourage addressed to my existing hotmail address. I accessed Hotail through the normal channels (not through entourage) and hey presto I had sent an outgoingemail from my new business account. I sent another email from my new business email with an attachment and that worked like a breeze.

However replies to the test email and new messages addressed to my business email that I sent from Hotmail didnt come through to my mailbox.
I figured that it was something to do with entourage and hotmail....but I sent test emails to some of my clients this morning (who have business and not hotmail emails) and they have replied with text emails but the emails havnt come through either. Does anyone know whats wrong and how I can get beyond one way traffic?

Any help or advice much appreciated!

irlrobins

Ok I think the first thing to do is to see if the mails your clients have sent are on the mail server. Go here. Enter your mail server, username and password. See if the mails are there or not.

That way we can work out if it's a server problem or a client problem.

Sligoaidan

HI. I checked the mail2web link and It said I had no emails. The support crowd at the hosting co sent me their flash tutorial for setting up email accounts with entourage on osx .So I followed that to the letter and sent my teste email to my hotmail account...it came through ..happy days, and another to a clients work email.. that came through as well. I sent a text only email from my hotmail account to my aidan@companyname.ie email address, which then checked the inbox in entourage, at the same time the client of mine sent an email to my address from her work account and sent it...neither have come through..
I checked the mail2web thing again and still no emails

irlrobins

If no emails when u use mail2web then the mails are not getting to the server. I'd contact hosting company and get them to test. Maybe delete the mail address and set it up again.

Sligoaidan

ya ive emailed the support team at the hosting co, so I have to wait my turn and be patient. Hopefully it'll all work out, and if not I'll be annoying your head again (or anyone else who would care to offer advice) Im new to this forum thing as well, though ive seen threads with loads of people posting stuff. how come you're the only one offering advice? (not being smart as i said im new to this stuff as well) I had joined this originally to start getting advice about building a house in Sligo!

irlrobins

Well everyone has their area of expertise (I'm not great on self builds having never done one myself), so different people will respond to different problems. Sometimes traffic is heavier at night so you might get more replies then.

Often I think it's best to let one person answer a query rather than cause confusion by making the OP (original poster) have to deal with several different solutions. People will step in if the responder gets stuck or is giving an incorrect solution.

At the end of the day, whether you get the correct answer from one person or ten doesn't matter, as long as you're happy!

TimTim

Check the mail log on your server, it could be dropping emails to due either a config file mess up or being blacklisted etc.

irlrobins

TimTim wrote:

Check the mail log on your server, it could be dropping emails to due either a config file mess up or being blacklisted etc.

Hosting companies rarely if ever provide mail server logs. They usually only provide www logs.

Sligoaidan

well im afraid email and web logs arent my area of expertise. Is it ok to say on these posts who the hosting company is?

when I got the domain name I got a hosting package from them as well with 200 email addresses....if only I could get one to work!

They sent me the details ie.

Bandwidth: 5000 Megabytes
Disk Space: 500 Megabytes

Virtual Domains: 4
Subdomains: 4

POP Email Accounts: 200
Email Forwarders: unlimited
Email Autoresponders: unlimited
Email Mailing Lists: 2
POP Server: mail.mybusinessname.ie
SMTP Server: mail.mybusinessname.ie
Login: (my login name from the online order form i used to get the domain etc)
Password: (the password I chose on the order form)

FTP accounts: 8
Anonymous FTP: OFF
FTP Server: ftp.mybusinessname.ie
Login:(my login name from the online order form i used to get the domain etc)
Password: (the password I chose on the order form)

They sent the ip address, details of...

MySQL Databases: 2
Domain Pointers: unlimited
CGI: ON
PHP: ON

they also sent the lgon in address so Ive uploaded through FTP a "Site under construction" page with my logo in place of the index page that was there.

To be honest I wouldnt know how to access the mail server to see if my emails were being dropped or not .I was quite happy that I could send mails from my new account, just confused as to why it wont accept them

irlrobins

Standard package.

Logs will be on the server. Usually viewable thru the control panel (DirectAdmin in your case). They prob don't provide any mail logs. They might offer a raw access log, but at the very least off you a stats page, showing number of visits, etc.

Don't worry about the logs. Unless you know what to look for they're not going to help you.

As regards sending and receiving, two different protocols (SMTP and POP3) are used. So just becuase it works one way, does not mean it will work the other way as well.

Sligoaidan

Well the support guy has emailed me and says he can only imagine that ive set a reply-to address ( I pressume that would be where i'd instruct entourage to send all mail directed to aidan@businessname.ie to a different email address that I would specify?)

he says that he has gone through my account and the test mail he sent is there. Ive emailed him and asked if the other emails are there as well (that I sent from hotmail and other clients have sent)

He said that it could be that the domain has not yet spread out across the internet(?) and to leave it till the end of the working day and try again.... I wonder does that mean (dont annoy my head till monday!)

Ive gone thugh entourage help to the section about trouble shooting emails>the emails dont appear in the inbox..which advises to check that I havnt ticked the "Allow online access (shows account in folder list) check box"... Help says that having this box ticked causes messages to stay on the server and not go to the inbox. well I hadnt that box ticked anyway. so it cant be that.. do you know where the reply-address option might be located? I dont think tha toption exists in direct admin which is where I set up aidan@businesnae.ie before going to entourage and doing the same

irlrobins

don't think the reply to thing is the issue. If you were composing a brand new mail to the businessname.ie address and it doesn't arrive then reply to address wouldn't come into it. So ignore that.

The domain name thing might be the issue. Takes a few hours for domain name to propagate to all DNS servers. So if I send a mail and my ISP's dns server can't locate the mail server it might get delayed.

I'd offer to login into server and check things out myself, but you prob wouldn't be comfortable with a random stranger doing this. (Not that I'd do any harm and you could change password after).

Sligoaidan

well random stranger I didnt really think you'd do any harm anyway. Sure Im skipping around like a lamb without a real clue as to whats going on with my email, and wouldnt know if I was talking to a sheep or a wolf . The support guy has just asked for all my login , account details etc and he is going to have a look under the bonnet for me, so hopefully it'll be fixed soon. The domain was activated at 5 oclock yesterday and Ive been happily emailing my hotmail account from my aidan@businessname.ie since I set it up at 11.30 last night and I was able to upload a new index.html file earlier today through fetch. Im not sure how long it would take for the domain to settle in and get comfortable. Ive deleted and reset up the aidan@businessname.ie email account in both direct admin and entourage a few times, so I hope thats not confusing the incoming emails! I'll let anyone who's interested know how I get on anyway! I'm not getting any other work done today surprise surprise. I have to head my head around Adobe GoLive to put my website together. Im used to using dreamweaver and flash to a lesser extent. Adobe go live is a bit of a pain at the mo, but I'll get there in the end

irlrobins

Well give it the weekend to see if it's DNS related and if it's still fubar'd after that, post back here on monday.