IMAP Instructions for Bearmail

Setting up IMAP:

Outlook Express will look like this the first time you open it:

To start the setup for IMAP go to Tools and select Accounts:

This will bring up the Internet Accounts screen:

Select the Mail tab and the Add a new Mail account:

The first screen to the Internet Connection Wizard will look like:

The Display name is just descriptive, you can put anything here, we will put the
name of the student for now:

Select Next and then will come the email address of the student:

Select Next and then will come the incoming server type, in this example - IMAP:

The IMAP information for our student email server is:
Notice that the Outgoing mail server is ITSMTP01.unco.edu

A key note to this setup - if you are not on UNC's Resnet connection or using UNC's dialup - you need to put in your ISP's outbound email server for Outgoing mail (SMTP) server.  For instance if you are using Comcast and have a cable modem the outbound email server might be: smtp.comcast.net    To find out for sure you may need to contact your ISP (Internet Service Provider).  The reason for this is that if you receive an email from outside UNC's domain like from someone using Hotmail or Yahoo and try to respond to that email, if you have blue.unco.edu as your Outgoing mail server it will not work because it is considered relaying.  In simple terms-say you have Comcast internet access-you are on their network and you respond to a email from a friend who used Yahoo.  The email would try to go from your Comcast connection INTO the UNC domain to the blue.unco.edu email server and then back OUTSIDE to Yahoo's domain.  This will not work and you will get an error.  If you change your Outgoing
email server to smtp.comcast.net and respond to the email - you would be on Comcast's network and the email would use the Comcast Outgoing email server which is also on their network and then send it to the Yahoo email account.  This situation is also true for responding to POP emails, so if you will be using IMAP or POP and an ISP that is not UNC, you will need to know their Outgoing email server as shown in the example below:

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Select Next and you will need to put in verification for your email account. This authenticates against your account on the server to access your email. 

If you are using a PC or laptop that you share you probably will not want to check the remember password box or others will be able to get into your email.  Shown below, the Remember password box is unchecked and when you open Outlook Express, you will be prompted for your password, this will assure you that only
you access your email.

Select Next and this part of the setup is finished.

Now in the mail tab area you will see the IMAP connection that has been set up.   Outlook Express is flakey in that the description takes the name of the server and not the descriptive name we put in which it stores in another parameter. To change it to something more representative highlite the item and select Properties:

Put in something descriptive so you can tell what the session is like "IMAP access robe1111".  That way you know what type of access and what account from only having to look at the Mail Account description.

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Now if you close Outlook Express and get back into it or select Send/Recv you will be prompted to authenticate for the IMAP email session that was configured:

Once you put in your password and select OK you will be prompted to download the folders that you may have created in your account on the student email server:

Select yes and then you will then see your email Inbox and folders that are on the student email server:

Setting up IMAP will be similar with most email clients so it will be up to you to figure it out for your particular email client and as stated before, it will also be up to you to learn how to effectively learn how to use IMAP with your email client if You choose to access Bearmail this way.

Page Last Update:  08/31/2005