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Opera Mail Tutorial

Troubleshooting Tips

General

Authentication

Opera supports a variety of authentication schemes for protecting your username and password as they are sent to your mail or news server. To make account configuration easier, Opera Mail automatically tries to find the most secure authentication method your server supports. Unfortunately, this does not always work. If you are receiving authentication errors, try choosing a different authentication method for the server in the account's server properties. The authentication methods are listed in order of security, with the most secure at the top.

We are always interested in improving the automatic authentication negotiation. If you have run into problems that are solved by changing to another authentication method, please file a bug report (including a log of client server communication) or visit one of the relevant discussions forums.

Enabling logging

Opera allows users to log incoming and outgoing server communications to a text file. For more information about enabling logging, please see our knowledge base article, Activating e-mail logging in Opera.

Outgoing mail

SMTP authentication

Some ISPs require "SMTP authentication" to send e-mail. Opera will normally show an error message similar to "Internal Error [553 This SMTP server requires authorisation. Most mail clients can be configured with "my server requires authorisation" to allow this]" if this is the case. To enable SMTP authentication, go to the "Server settings" tab in account properties, change "Authentication" for your outgoing server to "Auto", and enter your username and password.

Relaying denied

One of the most common problems users experience when sending e-mail is a "relay access denied" error. Many ISPs are trying to fight spam by making it more difficult for spammers to send their e-mails. Outgoing mail (SMTP) servers are often configured to only allow outgoing mail from users it recognizes through a process called "SMTP authenication". If you've received a "relay access denied" error, your outgoing mail server probably requires "SMTP authenication" to send e-mails. See the above troubleshooting tip for instructions to enable "SMTP authentication".

POP3 before SMTP

As an additional step to fight spam, many ISPs require you to check for new e-mail before being able to send messages. Opera allows you to do this by queuing e-mail, then sending it when checking for new messages. To enable this, go to the "Outgoing" settings tab in account properties and enable "Queue messages" and "Send queued e-mail after checking e-mail".

Getting more help

Other than this tutorial, there are several means of finding help for Opera Mail. As always, hit F1 to invoke Opera's built-in help files.

Discussion forums

The my.opera.com forums host a Mail / News client forum, where users help each other with Opera Mail problems. The forums are moderated and often visited by Opera employees, though they are not an official customer support channel.

Newsgroups

The news.opera.com newsgroup servers hosts a newsgroups, opera.mail+news, another place where users help each other with Opera Mail problems. Like the forums, the newsgroups are not an official customer support channel, though they are often visited by Opera employees. The Opera newsgroups are unmoderated. For more information about the Opera newsgroups, please see the on-line help for newsgroups.