Q. When we have guests on our network, they have trouble sending mail. We are with Rogers and the messages go out, but they don’t get delivered. What could be wrong?
A. A few years ago, Rogers and Yahoo! joined forces so they could manage mail services together using Yahoo!’s mail servers. While this benefits the services involved in managing email and spam filtering, it resulted in some new rules and restrictions.
During the early days of the Internet, users were much more friendly and could be trusted on a wide-scale basis. Since most users on the Internet could be trusted, security on the systems was much looser and most mail servers could accept and relay email to other users. As the Internet grew more and more, nefarious types started to take advantage of this trust. Spammers soon found out this loose policy could be taken advantage of. A server that would accept mail from any email address became known as an open relay.
It is estimated that 90% of all email traffic is actually spam. These days, most mail servers block email from domain names that are not registered among their users. So when a strange email lands on the mail server, it is often checked against lists of known spammers or simply refused out right. The latter is becoming the more often chosen protocol, and users are now finding that their email is not reaching the intended recipient. Some mail administrators maintain white lists of valid email addresses, but this has proved to be a huge task to manage.
If you’re trying to send email via a Rogers/Yahoo! account, you must be using a Rogers email account; otherwise, you have to add the outgoing email address to your accepted users list. Go to http://mail.yahoo.com and login with your Rogers email account and password. Once you’re logged in, click on the “Mail” link in the top right corner. Next, click on the “Options” link. You should see a place where you can add an email account. Enter your guest’s or other non-Rogers email address and press the “Add” button. You can skip the next screen; at the bottom you’ll find a validation code. At the same time, Rogers/Jack will send an email to that address. However, you can copy the code and simply paste it into the dialog screen and press validate.
When complete, you will see the outgoing email address listed and you will be able to send outgoing email from within the Rogers network. It is an annoying extra set of steps, but you can’t blame Rogers for wanting to protect its clients from the barrage of unwanted mail.
Q. Using Microsoft Outlook, I send email to everyone in my office with a list. I start typing the name of the list and Outlook automatically fills it in. However, I cannot edit the office list after we upgraded my Outlook to add or remove addresses. I also cannot find the original list in my contacts.
A. One of the things that email clients like Microsoft Outlook, Entourage and Apple’s Mail do is cache your email addresses. They store your addresses this way so that you can quickly address a message. The cache stores addresses of people and lists that you send to as well as addresses from messages you have received. You can add addresses to your address book or contacts by right-clicking on the addresses. However, you cannot easily edit the cached addresses.
After you upgraded your Outlook, your application migrated the cache file (called “Outlook.NK2” on Windows) so that your ability to quickly access addresses is maintained. The only way to regain the ability to edit the list is to recreate it. In Microsoft Outlook, click on “Contacts” and choose “New Distribution List” from the File menu. Give it a name like “Office 2” and add the addresses you need to the list. Your contacts will maintain your list for future additions and deletions.
You can select and auto complete email and press the down arrow to delete where it appears. The more extreme method is to delete the Outlook.NK2 file, but you will lose all the cached addresses. With Apple’s Mail you can edit “Previous Recipients” under the Window menu.
