Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
If there's a downside to setting this option, it's that Mail gives you only a few seconds to make your decision.
When Mail checks for new messages (or when you click the Get Mail button in the toolbar) and it finds a too-
large message waiting on the server, you see the dialog shown in Figure 6.6. You have only 15 seconds to click
one of the following buttons:
6.6
Mail displays this dialog when it detects an incoming message larger than the threshold you specified. Act fast!
Skip.
Leaves the message on the server. Note that Mail (sensibly) doesn't try to download the message again
until your next Mail session.
Delete.
Permanently deletes the message.
Download.
Downloads the message to Mail. This is the default action that Mail takes after the 15 seconds
are up.
Sending e-mail with a different server port
For security reasons, some Internet service providers (ISPs) insist that all their customers' outgoing mail must
be routed through the ISP's Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) server. This usually is not a big deal if you
use an e-mail account that the ISP maintains. However, it can lead to the following problems if you use an ac-
count provided by a third party (such as your website host):
Your ISP might block messages sent using the third-party account because it thinks you're trying to relay the
message through the ISP's server (a technique often used by spammers).
You might incur extra charges if your ISP allows only a certain amount of SMTP bandwidth per month, or a
certain number of sent messages, whereas the third-party account offers higher limits or no restrictions at all.
You might have performance problems, such as the ISP's server taking much longer to route messages than
the third-party host.
You might think that you can solve these problems by specifying the third-party host's SMTP server in the ac-
count settings. However, this doesn't usually work because outgoing e-mail is sent by default through port 25.
When you use this port, you must also use the ISP's SMTP server.
To work around this problem, many third-party hosts offer access to their SMTP server via a port other than the
standard port 25. For example, the iCloud SMTP server (smtp.me.com) also accepts connections on port 587.
Check your host's support pages or call your host to find out the nonstandard port it uses, if any.
