Rated 5 out of 5 stars

by alex dean on March 29, 2008 · permalink

If it doesn't appear to be working, and sending always uses the same SMTP server regardless of which you select or which you set as Default, I can help. It's a thunderbird configuration issue that I think maybe should be reported as a bug. I've used Thunderbird for at least 4 years, and honest to God it was only today I finally figured out what was going on. Any time I entered multiple SMTP servers, no matter which one was 'Default', my 'Send' always used the one I had first entered. The only way I could use a different server was to delete the previous one. Dumb, dumb, dumb...

OK, excuse the rant. Here's what I (and it seems some other who have reviewed this plugin) have been missing... there are 2 places in the Account Settings which are relevant.

1. The 'Outgoing Server (SMTP)' pane in 'Account Settings'. This is the obvious one. You can enter multiple servers, and set one as 'Default'. But normally, no matter what you do, 'Send' won't respect your choice. Arrgh.

2. In 'Account Settings', the main pane of each account has it's own 'Outgoing Server (SMTP)' drop-down box. By default, this is set to a specific server, and that's the one which will be used when you send mail from this account. 'Send' won't respect the 'Default' setting unless you select 'Use Default Server' from this select-box.

SmtpSwitch appears unable to override this behavior. If a mail account has a specific outgoing server selected, then that server will be used regardless of what you pick via SmtpSwitch. If you edit your mail account to 'Use Default Server', then SmtpSwitch works exactly as described.

I don't understand this behavior at all. I guess if you always want mail from 1 account to use the same SMTP server, it's the correct way to do things. But for me, I don't base my choice of SMTP server on 'which account I'm sending from'. I base it on 'where am I at the time'. At home, I use the SMTP server provided by my ISP, since it's the fastest. But they only allow me to connect when I'm on their network, so when I'm travelling with my laptop, I use a 3rd-party SMTP server. I always use the same outgoing server for all of my mail accounts, so the way TBird is set up to ignore my 'Default' selection, and the way it doesn't allow SmtpSwitch to function as desired, is really confusing and annoying. I hope this helps anyone who's had a similar issue.