If you leave your mail on the server, then it will eventually fill up, and when people try to e-mail or reply, they’ll get “the mailbox is over quota” or  something similar as a bounce-back message.

When that happens, you are going to have to either empty some of the mail, or increase the size of the mailbox, which would only be a temporary fix, until it fills up again. No matter what the device, cell phone or desktop, you have to change your email program behavior.

The default behavior of all e-mail programs is to remove mail from the server once it’s been downloaded. However, as more and more people want to receive mail in multiple places, they have changed their mail settings, and have even been told to do so by the telephone company’s tech support, and now they are having problems.

Here’s how to correct the root cause, but remember – you still have to go empty your mailbox at your host.

The screen shots and steps are for Outlook, but if you use any of a dozen other programs, on your computer or your phone, the concepts are always almost identical…

Go to Tools – account settings -

Then highlight the mailbox and hit the “change” button -

Hit the “more settings” button in the lower right”

Go to the Advanced tab and UNcheck the box that says “leave mail on server”  (or at least set it to empty when your deleted items folder)

Don’t forget that if people are getting bounce messages now, you’re also going to have to login to your web hosting control panel, an empty out some of the mail that sitting there. Remember it’s not the number of e-mails that’s the problem, it’s generally the large file attachments that are filling you up past the quota that you have set for each mailbox.

I put this here as a quick reference for hosting clients  but I hope it helps others…

As I feared, I’m now in my hotel trying to download 26 megs of mail on my (far too slow) Verizon Wireless Broadband service. Before I left, I forgot to limit my file attachment size for download.

Once it’s finally done, I’ll do the following in Outlook 2007 to make sure I don’t get hung up like this again:

Choose Tools – Options – select the Mail Setup tab

click the Send/Receive rectangular button – select the group on the left, then select the Edit button.

By default, “Download complete item including attachments” is selected, but you can change the settings to Download only headers for items larger than X“

Pick the size you’re willing to tolerate for X, and save.

For now, I guess I’ll go down to the casino, because it’s going to be a long long time… (thanks Verizon)

You’re not alone…
Users all over the country are finding out daily that suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, they are unable to send mail if they want people to reply to their business or personal e-mail addressed other than one that is @comcast.net. This is because Comcast is blocking port 25 , which is your default port for sending email through your mail software.

The error message says (fill in your own X):
The connection to the server has failed. Account: ‘XXXX’, Server: ‘xxx.xxx.xxx.xx’, Protocol: SMTP, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10060, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E

Gee that’s helpful, isn’t it?
If you are using mail.yourdomain.com for your SMTP outgoing mail server, then you get an error saying “unable to connect to the mail server” even though it just successfully connected to the mail server to retrieve your incoming mail. After wasting time calling your web host, and going through various troubleshooting techniques, they tell you to call Comcast.

To make matters worse, users are finding out one at a time, because Comcast is slowly rolling out these changes user by user in individual markets around the country. This month, it’s apparently Portland Oregon’s turn, where I live.

To cut to the chase, here’s the solution:
Change the port your computer is using for SMTP outgoing mail, from Port 25 to one that your hosting provider will allow. In most cases, this seems to be port 587 for Portland providers.

To do this in Outlook -

• Go to tools – e-mail accounts – view or change existing account
• Sselect the appropriate mail account and hit the change button
• Go to the more settings button, and into the Advanced tab
• Change your default port 25, to port 587, and you should be back in business in most cases.

Still broken?

• Added note from comments below – Some people in the midwest for whom 487 didn’t work succesfully chaged to 465 and picked SSL under the “use the following type of encrypted connection” drop down. They did not check the “this server requires an encrypted connection” box.

In Outlook express -

• Go to tools – accounts – Mail tab
• Choose Properties box – Advanced Tab – and from there you can do the same

The reason Comcast claims to be doing this is in an effort to prevent spam being sent by zombie/spyware/virus laden computers using their bandwidth and their Internet connection.

I suspect they are really doing it to limit liability for any future potential lawsuits, and not really to save bandwidth, but I have no problem with that.

The problem with Comcast doing this is that they do not seem to be telling all of their support people, and do not be notifying their customers. This has been going on around the country for MONTHS.

Instead, it takes the end user hours of frustrating time on the phone spent with lower-level tech-support who have no idea that this change has even taken place.

One can only guess how many individual users are still frustrated at this very moment because they are being forced to do their business e-mail from home using their @comcast.net accounts, after uninformed Comcast agents are able to help them?

As a web host, we were forced to spend hours dealing with Comcast before we got an actual answer, and we still lost a couple of hosting customers over it, who were convinced that it must be our fault, since Comcast told them it was.

Great customer service. If there was any competing product in my market I would switch in a heartbeat. I tried once before in 2005 after nearly an entire summer of poor Comcast connectivity.

Thanks Comcast, for valuing our time so very little, in your quest to make mega millions.