[maranellof1]

i currently am using 2 email accounts with mail, one yahoo account and one university account... before when i was using just the yahoo account, everything was totally fine when sending and recieving... when setting up my university email account, there are 2 outgoing smtp servers being used.. one is stanford.smtp.mail.edu and the other is stanford-roam.smtp.mail.edu, depending on if you are on the stanford network or not...
now here is the wierd part... ever since i setup my stanford account into mail, everytime i try to send something from yahoo, that mail delivery problem window pops up saying that the connection to the yahoo server, is unable to be established and to pick another one from the list of servers... when i am at stanford, if i pick the stanford.smtp.mail.edu then it goes, and when i am at home when i choose stanford-roam.smpt.mail.edu it is also sent.... in other words, the outgoing yahoo mail smpt server doesnt work anymore at all and it always asks for another server... what gives?????????
this has really been a pain in the ass for a while now... all advice will be appreciated... thanks in advance...

[gyroscope4]

have you seen this yahoo mail help page?
i see two possible problems. one, if you write email with the "from" address as your stanford address, yahoo won't accept it. (when you compose a new message in mail, there's a popup menu where you can choose which account to use.) two, the stanford network may not allow you to send email via somebody else's smtp server. seems like the easiest thing to do is always use the stanford servers for both accounts.

[maranellof1]

thanks for the post... i forgot to mention before that i am sending it from yahoo using the popup menu, and not stanford, and that is when it asks for the server to be set... and i agree with you that maybe when on the stanford network, maybe it doesnt allow one to use another outgoing smtp... but the thing that i dont understtand is when sending a yahoo mail from home (comcast cable), why do i have to use the stanford-roam smtp, when that should only be for using the stanford mail from the popup menu??? maybe i should call up the i.t. department....

[dcipjr]

Multiple SMTP servers get a little hairy. It's usually standard procedure to only have one, and use that. When you start using multiple ones, things get a little messy.
I go to Villanova, and our outgoing mail servers don't like for you to be off campus. Most of the campus population just uses Webmail, but I can't abide the lack of features, so I use Mozilla Thunderbird on my PC and Mail.app on my Mac. I can use a VPN to get onto the campus network and take it from there, but that annoys me.
My solution was built right into Mac OS X; OS X has Postfix, a mail server application, installed. You just have to activate it. This will tell you how to do that. Using those instructions, I set up my Mac as my SMTP server, and now I don't have any problems.
However, as that page will warn you, being your own SMTP server can be a wee bit risky. You don't want spammers sending mail from your Mac -- definitely not a good thing. So make sure you have your firewall up, and follow those instructions to the letter. Then you'll be in good shape.
This was my method of solving problems with other people's SMTP servers -- don't use them. Your mileage may vary, but this could be a solution if you don't mind a little bit of Terminal magic.