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Setting up your computer to receive E-mail:
Frequently asked questions regarding VBISD E-mail
service:
Q:
I just signed up for VBISD E-mail service. What kind of support can
VBISD provide for me?
A: VBISD e-mail is a free service available to any school
employee in Van Buren county. To keep this service free, we provide
only basic support to non-VBISD employees for the e-mail accounts we host.
This means we will verify that your E-mail account username and password
are working properly on our server as well as reset passwords.
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Q:
How do I set up my e-mail program to use the VBISD e-mail service?
A: Every e-mail program needs three basic things to work with the
VBISD e-mail service:
- Username (entered in the form of "username@vbisd.org")
- Password (assigned to you when you applied for you account)
- Mail server name (for VBISD it would be "mail.vbisd.org")
In addition to this our e-mail server requires authentication for
sending out e-mail. Some e-mail programs have a special setting for
this that must be enabled for you to send out e-mail.
The following are basic instructions for setting up and configuring the
VBISD e-mail service on your computer. VBISD provides these
instructions as a service to our constituents who use the VBISD e-mail
service. It is not the policy of VBISD to provide support for
privately owned personal computers.
We provide instructions for the following programs:
If your e-mail program is not listed above, consult your e-mail
program's documentation for further instructions.
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Q:
I don't know how to set up my e-mail program to use your service.
Can you walk me through setting it up? Can you set it up for me?
A: It is not the policy of VBISD to provide support for privately
owned personal computers. Because there are hundreds of different
kinds of e-mail programs and computers available that will work with our
service, we cannot walk you through setting up e-mail over the phone,
nor are we able to go to your location and set it up for you. We
provide detailed instructions on this page that show the basic setup for
some of the more popular e-mail programs available (See the section:
"How do I set up my e-mail program to use the VBISD e-mail service?
above.).
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Q:
My E-mail was working fine and it suddenly stopped working.
What is wrong?
A: There are two possibilities that could be causing this
problem:
- Your Dial-up connection is pointing to an outdated DNS server:
To fix this, open the properties of your dial-up connection and
look for a DNS server setting. If it is set to "207.73.95.240"
change it to "Obtain DNS server address automatically". That
should clear up the problem.
- Your e-mail username is not set correctly in your e-mail
program:
E-mail usernames should be your full e-mail address. Make sure that
in your e-mail program your e-mail user name (or Account name) is set to
your user ID "@vbisd.org" (Example: if your username is jsmith
then it should be set to jsmith@vbisd.org.). Again, see the section:
"How do I set up my e-mail program to use the VBISD e-mail service?"
above for more detailed instructions for configuring and setting up some
of the more popular e-mail programs.
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Q:
I can receive e-mail fine, but I can't send out. The error says
something about SMTP authentication required.
A: You also might be able to send to other VBISD e-mail accounts,
but not to accounts outside of VBISD. This is happening because the VBISD e-mail server is no longer
functioning as an open mail relay. It used to be that a username and
password were not required to send out through VBISD's e-mail server.
For security reasons, they are now required. To set this up, see the
section: "How do I set up my e-mail program to use the VBISD e-mail service?"
above for configuring and setting up some of the more popular e-mail
programs.
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Q:
I made those changes and I still cannot get my e-mail to work.
What now?
A: Are you using Netscape mail? We have noticed that some
users of Netscape mail who have made this change are still not able to
connect to the e-mail server. For some reason, even after the e-mail user name
has been updated, Netscape mail still sends out the
old username. The only fix for this is to upgrade to Netscape 7.2.
You can download it by CLICKING HERE
(24 MB download). You can also change to another e-mail program.
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Q: I am already using Netscape 7.2. What do I do now?
A: Try reinstalling Netscape 7.2. That usually will clear
the problem up.
<Top of page> Q: I am still having problems. What do I do now?
A: If you have completed the above instructions and still are having
problems connecting, your e-mail password probably needs to be reset.
Feel free to call our Systems Administrator at
269-674-8091 x775 and he will verify that your account is working properly
and, if necessary, reset your password for you.
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