I see there are a lot of older threads with similar problems, but they seem to be for the N900 mostly, or for webmail addresses like gmail. Been banging my head against the wall with our IT guys for weeks now, so hoping someone might have an idea.

I got my work email finally set up and working in Modest on my N800 a few months back. Worked great when I was traveling through Europe. A couple of weeks after I got back we upgraded to a new Exchange server and since then I can receive mail, but not send. I connect through IMAP from Thunderbird at home, and have no problems sending from there, but on the N800 using the same settings I get "SMTP authentication failed." Check user name and password or that you have access to mail.mpglobal.com" My IT guys have tested and they can get mail to work in an iPhone and Symbian phones fine, so they are about to give up on me. Hoping there might be something else I can try.

wondering what login method is being used?ill

Modest doesn't log failures, but if your it guys can tell you what error code your attempts are throwing...the following may be of some help:

http://www.fehcom.de/qmail/smtpauth.html

I used to have issues with authentication failures that were solved by changing my wifi router.
it was an intermittent issue and took a while to figure out. have all your attempts been from the same access point?

good luck

I think over the last few weeks we've tried just about every permutation of settings. We'd been setting the "Use secure authentication" to "none" but switched it to login yesterday and I was suddenly able to send mails from the office wifi netwok (but stopped receiving, which my IT guys thought was probably related to a DNS record). When I got home and connected to my wifi I started receiving mails again, but could not send. The error message switched to "unable to connect to SMTP server mail.xxxx.com or it does not exist. Server may currently be unavailable. Check your network has access to server."

I've mostly tested on my home and work networks, but I know I've had the same error popup from a coffee shop network also. Thunderbird connects via the same wifi network at home and can send OK.

I'll check with the IT guys on the error codes. Is this something they would see on the Exchange side when the N800 fails to connect? I also saw a post about enabling logging in Modest by running a command in terminal first, but this was specifically for the N900, which I think runs a newer version of Modest? Wasn't sure if that would work for me, but thought I'd give it a try later today.

Can you send mail from a desktop machine connected to the same wifi? Connected directly to the ethernet? SMTP is considered a problem by ISPs and they often block access to other SMTP servers; Comcast in particular is notorious for this.

You can use any SMTP server to send mail from a given address; you do not have to go thru the Exchange server. Modest allows SMTP to be configured per-connection rather than per-account.

SMTP used to be a nightmare for me until I signed up with smtp2go:
http://www.smtp2go.com/

The "Learn more" link expands on mcow's explanation about ISPs blocking access to other servers. It doesn't actually say how smtp2go gets round the block - probably they don't want potential competitors to know.

You can try it free for 7 days.

I am able to send email from a laptop that is on the same wifi using IMAP with Thunderbird. A couple of months ago I was able to send mail from the N800 and Modest also using the same wifi network. The only thing that has changed as far as I know is that we have upgraded from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. So I don't think this is the ISP blocking mail, but I'll take a look at smtp2go and see about giving the trial a shot just in case.

Also, one other item. Yesterday as I mentioned I changed some settings and was able to send a mail from my office wifi. Today with the exact same settings I'm no longer able to send mail from the office either.

One reason why ISPs block outgoing email is to prevent spammers from using their network. They don't publicize the criteria they use, since that might tell the spammers how to evade the block. Anything "unusual" could be suspicious - for example, the combination of an unrecognized SMTP server and an unfamiliar email client (Modest). You just don't know why they might be blocking you.

IMAP has nothing to do with outgoing mail. You have a problem with SMTP, which uses separate servers and separate settings.

"mail.mpglobal.com" doesn't look like an address for an SMTP server. I'm not saying that it's wrong, just that I would expect something like "smtp.mpglobal.com" instead. It looks more like a server for incoming mail (IMAP, in your case, though it's actually more typical of POP servers). Have you checked this with the IT guys?


Are your IT guys still tweaking the new servers?

IT guys shouldn't be tweaking the servers any more, but can't always tell because some things get lost in communication. I definitely know that they are using the same address for both incoming and outgoing servers, not sure why though.

Thanks for the education on IMAP. I didn't realize that it was just a protocol for incoming.

guys... I was having the same issue on my GMAIL account.. (SMPT authentication failed and incorrect username password)

so I changed my password several times but no luck... then I tried CAPITAL letter in the password.. and it worked

hope this helps !!

I wound up deleting my 4 imap gmail accounts from modest. Going through the gmail mobile website (and forwarding all to one account) was just faster.