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Opera Mail Tutorial

Setting Up an Account and Importing Messages

Setting up an Account

To begin, you will need to set up a new account or import account settings from another application. Go to Tools > Mail and chat accounts. If you have not yet created any accounts, you will be prompted to create an account now. If you have already created an account, click the Add button. Select which kind of account you would like to create.

Ask your ISP for the specific server names or IP addresses to enter into the incoming and outgoing mail servers. If your ISP uses a non-standard server port (default ports are 143 for IMAP, 110 for POP, and 119 for NNTP), you can enter it after the server name in the form "servername:port", i.e. "pop.example.com:111".

The "Leave messages on server" setting is enabled by default for POP users. This setting tells Opera Mail to leave all received e-mail on the mail server, so it's accessible from other computers. Most POP users will want this setting disabled if they'll only be accessing their e-mail via Opera Mail.

Once you have created an e-mail or newsgroup account, the Mail menu and Mail panel should appear. You can use these to access your accounts.

Security

TLS and SSL (the precursor to TLS) enable encrypted communications between a mail client and server. Encrypted communications allow your password and other sensitive data to be sent across the Internet without others being able to spy on it. Opera Mail supports both TLS and SSL. The server must support e-mail encryption for you to use this feature.

If you want to use TLS encryption, enable the "Secure connection" setting. If you want to use SSL encryption, enable the "Secure connection" setting and add the necessary port (port 993 for secure IMAP and port 995 for secure POP) in the "Incoming server" input as described above. These settings can also be adjusted on the "Servers" tab in account settings once your account has been created.

Useful Account Settings

From the Tools > Mail and chat accounts dialog, you can create, delete, and edit your mail and news accounts. To edit account details, select an account and click "Edit". Important account settings are described below.

Account category

On the "General" tab, you can add a custom account category to be used with the account selector. Type a new category name or choose an existing category from the drop-down. You can then restrict visible messages to specific categories using the context menu in the Mail panel or from Mail > Show account.

Settings

On the "Servers" tab of account settings, the authentication scheme can be adjusted. The "Authentication" drop-down for incoming servers is set to "Auto" by default and will show the current authentication method (i.e. "Auto (AUTO LOGIN)") being used by the account. "Auto" attempts to use the most secure authentication method available first and if it fails, tries the next most secure method until one succeeds. These authentication settings only control encryption of your username and password. TLS or SSL is needed to encrypt all your mail data, while it is being transferred between Opera and your mail server.

If you do not want to use "Auto" authentication or have problems making it work with your account, simply use the drop-down to specify the type of authentication to use. Not all servers support all methods of authentication.

If your account requires authentication for sending e-mails, change "Authentication" for your "Outgoing server" to "Auto" and enter your username and password.

Opera supports:

CRAM-MD5, APOP, login, and plaintext authentication for POP accounts
CRAM-MD5 and plaintext authentication for IMAP and NNTP accounts
CRAM-MD5, login, and plaintext authentication for SMTP accounts.

Security password

You can set a security password to control access to your mailboxes. Go to Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Security, set a master password with at least one numeric and one alphabetic character. Tick "Use as master password for e-mail and Wand". You can set the frequency of a system password prompt using the "Ask for password" setting.

Important: Be sure to remember your master password, because you cannot retrieve it.

Opera Web Mail Premium

Users of the fee-based Opera Web Mail Premium service can access their Opera Web Mail account using POP. Opera Mail will automatically fill out much of your account information when you choose to setup an Opera Web Mail account. Your "Login name" should appear as follows: "username:operamail.com#operamail.com", where "username" is your Opera Web Mail account ID. For your reference, the incoming server is "pop3.operamail.com" and the outgoing server is "smtpx.operamail.com". More information about Opera Web Mail is available in the Opera Knowledge Base.

Message import

It is possible to import e-mail from earlier versions (before 7.x) of Opera, Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Mail (only version 6 and 7, and related email clients such as the Mozilla suite), Thunderbird, or any mailbox stored in the generic mbox format (usually *.mbx or *.mbs files), including older versions of Netscape. You can import different accounts settings, folders, and contacts. Your imported account's folder structure will be displayed under "Filters", and the imported messages will be available in "Received". Filters cannot be imported.

Select File > Import and export > Import mail to import. If your previous mailer is not listed above, see if it includes the capability to export to the mbox format.