Hi, I’m on the most recent e/OS update having just installed the OS on my Fairphone 4 5G. The ‘Mail’ program rejects my imap and smtp details so I can’t connect with my provider. Thsi is the case both with automatic and manual installation of details. The info is identical with the detais onf my Mac email setup.
I’ve tried set up email my account on two other email apps I downloaded and there are no problems.
I don’t want anymore clutter of email apps…
Then most common connection problem with mail servers is a wrong security layer setting. It’s a real difference to use SSL/TLS or STARTTLS or no encryption. And IMAP server and SMTP server can be different.
And the encryption of the password and/or special port settings (which can depend on the security layer or not) come on top. This all must match what the server needs.
Different mail applications have different default values for these settings, so some will probably work, others will not.
Thanks for your informative reply!
Is there any reason why there couldn’t be a simple link to a page which states clearly what the Mail program expects of users trying to create an account? Is there some potential danger in a new user trying to set up an email account on ‘Mail’?
Can anyone familiar with the app give a short description of its features (strengths and weaknesses)?
Not the Mail program, your servers (two: IMAP and SMTP) have expectations, that’s the reason why there’s not just one bullet proof algorithm to use. Your Mail app must fulfill their needs. Most mail providers publish these needs on their website.
The most practical method to get a mail client working is to use exactly the settings from another mail client you already have. You said you have. So you analyze their settings:
server addresses (two, can be the same but in many cases different)
user names (two, can be the same)
security layers (two, can be the same)
ports (two, normally depending on the concrete security layers but sometimes differing from standard ports)
password encryption, also called authentication method (two, can be the same)
These settings must all be right. If one doesn’t fulfill the server’s needs you will mostly not be able to be successful. Yes, this can take a while until you get it working.
No, there’s probably no danger configuring your Mail app.
An evil setting you can make is to use polling on an IMAP server (as you typically would do it with a POP3 server). This is the default and a lot of Mail apps on /e/ devices use this. But modern IMAP servers don’t need at all to be polled again and again every few minutes which causes then a lot of network traffic especially when you have a lot of stuff in your Inbox. This consumes then also a lot of energy on your device. IMAP servers have a push mechanism called IMAP IDLE - the server informs you when there’s a new message, the device must only send very short keep-alive messages from time to time to tell the server I’m still here. So in the Account settings of your email account on your device you must go into the Fetching mail section and set Folder poll frequency to Never (you can then still manually poll the server). Then you go down to the Advanced section and set Refresh IDLE connection to a proper value, 12 or 24 minutes, depends on the server, the longer the better but not every server accepts long periods. A significant change in behavior should be that you get your emails in just a few seconds, not in minutes.
