Outlook no longer linkng to BT Premium email

[jeccles2]

I moved on to BT Premium email successfully many months ago with five BT email addresses I use.  When my Windows 11 PC crashed a week ago I had to reload Windows and Microsoft 365.  I successfully recreated my Outlook with all my BT email addresses which worked fine for a few days until my primary address stopped updating or sending.  I could still access the account as webmail.  I deleted the address from Outlook and tried to recreate it but each time I try automatic setup it fails, repeatedly asking me to enter my password.  When I try to set it up manually Outlook returns with an error message "We couldn't connect to the outgoing (SMTP) server. The connection timed out".

My four alternate addresses can receive mail but cannot send; I get the password request for the mail.btinternet.com server but it doesn't accept the password.

Can anyone suggest what may have gone wrong

[infinitywaiter]

I have always used manual setup when reconnecting BT Email to Microsoft Outlook.

Just make sure that you are using the correct BT Server settings as shown here and you shouldn't have any issues:

BT Email server settings

As for password requests, make sure that you are typing them correctly and not having anything extra, even something as stupid as an extra space!

[gg30340]

It may be the case that your accounts are showing as BTMail Basic which can not be used with an email client.

Log onto your MyBT and go to "Your Products" then "Mail, manage"  and check that your account type is showing as "Premium" and that all your email accounts are showing as part of your account.

[jeccles2]

Thank you for your post infinitywaiter.  I use 'copy' from my password manager to ensure always correct passwords. I know the server settings are correct because all my mail ID's worked for several days before they started to be rejected.

BT's outgoing mail server seems to be rejecting my mails from Outlook, iPhone and Thunderbird except on odd occasions. I can still access my BT Webmail with the same ID's without problem.

[jeccles2]

Thank you gg30340. I believe basic email only allows a single ID whereas I am using six in my family.

What I find difficult to accept is that all six email IDs functioned correctly for several days after setup from Outlook and iPhone and then just stopped.
I have since installed Thunderbird client which immediately got my principle ID accepted by the BT servers but that doesn't successfully work every time: I recently tried to send an email which was rejected with the "confirm password" box and then accepted it after three retries.

[jeccles2 · Accepted solution]

Update on this problem.

I set up a VPN and tried to recreate my primary email address which was successful! All my addresses now appear to be functioning again from Outlook and Thunderbird and iPhone.

Could this suggest that BT didn't like accepting my emails through an IP address allocated by Gigaclear? At one stage during my trials I did see an error message that included mention of an IP address and "policy" but I am not sufficiently savvy to understand the likelihood or implications of this.

Thank you to those contributors who took the trouble to look at my post - now a happy man!

[gg30340]

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@jeccles2 wrote:

Thank you gg30340. I believe basic email only allows a single ID whereas I am using six in my family.

What I find difficult to accept is that all six email IDs functioned correctly for several days after setup from Outlook and iPhone and then just stopped.
I have since installed Thunderbird client which immediately got my principle ID accepted by the BT servers but that doesn't successfully work every time: I recently tried to send an email which was rejected with the "confirm password" box and then accepted it after three retries.

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Just for information. If your email account was "downgraded" to BTMail Basic all the email accounts that were associated/set up from your BT Broadband account would also be downgraded to BTMail Basic.

The IP address you were allocated could have been on a blacklist and as such emails coming from it could have been rejected by BT.

[jeccles2]

Update to this issue.  It is now clear that when I have VPN on my email works flawlessly and when I turn it off I cannot send email and get challenged with password incorrect.