Most end users have multiple accounts in a variety of places. They’ve joined sites and community forums as general as anything automobile related or financial advice to as specific as a fan club’s web site. Then you have the more common email account offerings from the popular search engine web sites and/or traditional email service sites.

Some users have reported errors when accessing external email accounts though they never had similar errors before. Error messages that include a “forbidden” notation may also be displayed. Such error messages look like the following:

Forbidden
Configuration:
   Account: (external account)
   Server: http://(server name)/
   User name: {email address}
   Protocol: HTTPMail
   Port: 0
   Secure(SSL): 0
   Error Number: 998
   Code: 800ccc33

Additional information may be displayed as follows:
Unable to poll for new messages on your HTTP server. 
Server Response: ‘Forbidden’,
Secure(SSL): No,

“Header download for the ‘Inbox’ folder did not complete. “

It’s possible that your end user’s email account is not set up correctly or that it may need to be re-created. An administrator can follow the steps outlined below:

1. Select Tools and then Account Settings.
2. Select the Email tab.
3. Click “New”.
4. Select the appropriate server: Microsoft Exchange, POP3, or IMAP.
5. Click “Next” or hit enter.
6. Enter the nickname for the user. This will be the users “sender” identity.
7. Type the users fully qualified email address. (For example: username@service.com)
8. Check “manually configure server settings” or “additional server types”.
9. Click “Next” or hit enter.
10. Check “Internet Email”.
11. Click “Next or hit enter.
12. Select IMAP for the account type.
13. Type the incoming email server name such as: “imap.server.com”
14. Type the outgoing email server name such as: “smtp.server.com”
15. Type the user’s screen name.
16. Type the user’s password.
17. Click “More Setting”.
18. Select the Outgoing Server tab.
19. Check “My outgoing server requires authentication”.
20. Select the Advanced tab.
21. Type the outgoing server’s port number.
22. Click “OK” or hit enter.
23. Click “Next” or hit enter.
24. Click “Finish”.
25. Click “Close”.

This will enable an end user to download email messages, using standard email protocols, from their external account into Outlook and send email as if from that external email address account.

In working with external email accounts it is sometimes useful to create additional profiles for end users to help them separate and categorize their email messages. As mentioned earlier, end users usually have at least four or five email accounts on different servers which they access periodically throughout the week. Different profiles can be set up to accommodate these multiple email accounts each with their own configurations.

One caveat that end users need to be aware of is that they cannot dynamically switch their profiles without first exiting out of their current environment. They must first exit Outlook, restart it and sign in using a different profile.

The information contained within a profile will include: email account username, display name, email server name, and the Internet service provider’s (ISP) account password.

Also contained within the account profile for an Outlook account is what folders to use for storing data such as rules, messages, contacts, calendars, notes, tasks, journals, Search Folders and account settings.

The storing of email profiles is where you’d expect it – in the Windows registry. All of the profile data is retrieved once Outlook is started. But if the profile information for a particular email account is corrupt or outdated then error message will be displayed. Such error messages might look like the following:

“The operation failed due to a registry or installation problem. Please reinstall.”

Administrators should always maintain a regular backup schedule so that if profiles have become corrupted or are inaccessible for some reason then they can always go back to a good backup to recreate their environment if necessary.

Another error message you may receive when accessing an external email account may be the following:

There was a problem logging onto your mail server. Your Password was rejected. Account: (account name),
Server: (server name),
Protocol: POP3,
Server Response: ‘-ERR Inbox for (…) is in use.’,
(or Server Response: ‘-ERR Unable to lock maildrop’)
Port: 110,
Secure (SSL): No,
Server Error: 0x800CCC90,
Error Number: 0x800CCC92

In this case it is possible that the mail process has stopped. A notification should be sent out to end users requesting them to wait a small amount of time before trying to access their email.

These are just a small sample of error messages related to email accounts and profiles that are not accessible. Some solutions are as simple as waiting for the hung process to get restarted. Other solutions are more time consuming such as having to recreate account profiles. Knowing these solutions can make an administrator more valuable to their organization.