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Seamlessly Switching Mail Servers

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Jonathon Mezera0 Comments

The purpose of this post is to simplify the process of switching mail servers, specifically from Plesk mail to Connect Unix mail, and to provide a detailed procedure on how to make the changes in your e-mail programs without losing any of your e-mail.

For this example to be relevant, you must be a Donet customer that is switching from Plesk mail to Donet’s Connect Unix e-mail environment.  If you do not use an e-mail program like Outlook, and instead use a Webmail interface, this example will not help, so please contact us for additional guidance.

The first step, of course, is to have Donet set up your e-mail addresses up on our mail server.  We will then give you all of the information necessary to configure your e-mail clients.  With the information you are provided, you will have to add your account to your e-mail program (detailed instructions below).

In Outlook 2010, click File followed by Add Account (Tools -> Account Settings -> Add for earlier versions).

In the window that opens, select “Manually configure server settings or additional server types.”  Then click Next.

In the next window, select Internet E-mail, then click Next.

The account you will be adding can be either POP or IMAP.  If you’re not sure which one to choose, pick POP — you can always switch to IMAP later if you decide that’s right for you.

Next, fill in the Internet E-mail Settings with the information Donet provides you.  Your e-mail server names will be the same as what is shown in the below picture, you just need to fill in your name (as you want recipients of your messages to see), e-mail address, and then the username/password that Donet supplies you.

The Incoming Mail Server is pop3.donet.com and the Outgoing Mail Server is smtp.donet.com.  You will fill in all other information on that screen.

After you have it filled out, click More Settings on the bottom right-hand side.  In the new window that pops up, you should already be under the General section.  Here, you can simply add something to the end of your Mail Account name to indicate that this is the new account.  I usually just add “NEW” at the end of it.

Do not click OK just yet, as there are a few more things to adjust here.  If you did click OK, all you have to do is click the More Settings button again to get back to this spot.

Now click the Outgoing Server tab.  Enable the setting at the top that says “My outgoing server requires authentication.”

Now, click on the Advanced tab at the top right.  Change the Outgoing Server Port Number from 25 to 587, and then click OK.

You should now be back at the Add New Account window, where you have already filled everything out.  Just click Next (Outlook will likely test the account settings at this point) and then click Finish in the following window to complete the setup.

Now that you have added the new account, you should have two instances of the same e-mail address in your e-mail program.  If you click on File followed by Account Settings, you should see something like this (but with your own e-mail address, of course):

You should now also see both accounts on the left side of Outlook where your folders are listed.  The new, not yet active account will be the one that you typed NEW next to in a previous step, and should be listed along with your current active account you’ve been using:

Now, we just have to tell the new account to use the same inbox that the old one does.  Click on File followed by Account Settings.  Click on the account that says “NEW” next to it, and then click Change Folder.

Now, just click on the inbox for your old account (the one without NEW next to it), and click OK.  This tells Outlook that everything you get for your new account will be delivered to the same inbox as your old one.  You can click Close on the remaining settings window.

After all of the users have completed the above steps, your mail setup will have to be adjusted at Donet.  More specifically, we will have to ensure all of the spam filtering and proper mail routing is in place, and then the MX record in your domain’s DNS will have to be changed to deliver mail to the new mail server.

After Donet confirms your mail is being delivered to the new server, all you have left to do is remove your old account from Outlook.  This is done by clicking File followed by Account Settings (or Tools followed by Account Settings for earlier versions), selecting the account that does not have NEW next to it, and then clicking Remove.

If you have questions about this process, please let us know.