[SOLVED] setting up kmail

[ptoche]

I have never used kmail. I use either Thunderbird or Windows Live Mail (I actually prefer the latter).

I'm having a problem at the first step.

"The email address you entered is not valid because it does not seem to contain
an actual email address, i.e. something of the form joe at example.org."

I attach a screenshot, so you can see that my email address is indeed of the form Joe at example.org

None of the bug discussions I read helped. Am I doing something wrong?

EDIT: After posting my question, I reviewed the attachment and noticed that the error is not with the email address, as the error message states, but rather with the "alias". If I use my email address as an alias, the error disappears. But what's the point of an alias if it's identical to the address itself? Am I misunderstanding what an alias is?

Do you use kmail, do you have an alternative to recommend?

Thanks!

[SteveRiley]

Re: setting up kmail

Are you entering something else in the alias field, or are you leaving it blank? I can't tell because that field is covered up in your screenshot.

[woodsmoke]

Re: setting up kmail

I will await a reply to SR's question, but as a first glance,

My "name" is the name of my computer, although it can be anything like "woodsmoke". But you have included your e-mail addy on the same line and that is not supposed to be there.

It "may" be that the program is parsing the name, sees the e-mail addy and gets stalled at the name.

Notice the Capital "P" not a small "p" as in the actual e-mail addy.

IN the e-mail address line merely put the e-mail address not your name and then the e-mail address.

If you do not NEED an alias do not enter one, I don't have one.

but I await, along with SR, the reply to his question.

woodsmoker

[ptoche]

Re: setting up kmail

Dear Steve, Dear woodsmoke,

thanks a lot for your replies. I apologize for taking a little while to get back to you on this, the holiday disruption you see, but I'm back on track now.

So to describe in words, in kmail, Tools --> Configure --> Identities --> Modify --> Your Name field filled, Organization field empty, Email address field filled, Email aliases = the crux of the problem.

When I first posted I didn't realize that the problem was with the field "Email aliases" because changing to different aliases didn't make any difference. It didn't occur to me to leave the aliases field empty because, well, I'm silly. Now I can see that it may be left empty altogether. But back then, instead I found that filling it with my email address worked. This idea came from the wording of the error message. The main text of the error message states "The email address you entered is not valid because it does not seem to contain an actual email address, i.e. something of the form joe@example.org". Based on my reading of this I assumed the problem was with the main email address field. But I then noticed, hardly visible because squeezed and truncated, at the top, "Invalid Email Alias "pat..." (the dots indicated the truncation). That's when I realized the problem was with the alias, but by then I had already (hastily) posted my question. Hence I amended it to reflect my new understanding of the problem. Still influenced by the error message I sought to use an email address in the field, not noticing that leaving the alias field empty does indeed work.

I personally use aliases a lot. I typically assign a single letter. So what's with the alias field in kmail, is it broken?

@woodsmoke, what's an addy?

[woodsmoke]

Re: setting up kmail

Hi ptoche.

Thanks for your question and I apologize for the use of the non-standard term "addy" which, for a group of people, means "address".

I should have known that it is non-standard and not used it, I'll replace it in the post. Thanks again.

As to the alias, I've never used them but I'll fiddle with it, possibly SR will report back before me, and I might not be able to produce a useable answer anyway.

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

Re: setting up kmail

Hi
Ok, I never "wanted to use an alias" so I never even fiddled with it.

As with my use of the term "addy" for address, this is a situation of "what is the person's definition of the term".

There is also the ambiguity of the terms "e-mail alias" and "alias".

I) Here is one definition of e-mail alias: An e-mail account to which another e-mail account forwards a message.

In other words, I have g-mail as my e-mail account for Kontact, and I want to forward an incoming e-mail to my Yahoo account.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_alias

So, given that, I did a test by entering a "name", such as woodsmoke, in the alias box and it was rejected with the same message which you received.

Also, given that, I put my Yahoo e-mail address in the alias box and it was accepted.

I then did a test of the system by going to my college e-mail account and sent a test message to the g-mail account and it was received at gmail and also received in Kontact.

The message was NOT received at Yahoo. I made a second attempt. not received.

So....just for the heck of it I went back to gmail and the forwarding stuff looked ok BUT.....

I then noticed that there is a radio button which says that I AUTHORIZE forwarding. So, I ticked that and saved.

In other words, the two activities at gmail are not intimately connected on the set up page itself, that is the entering of the forwarding address AND the authorization.

Please note that the previous two test messages were not in some kind of "pending situation".

In other words, the forwarding will happen only after the forwarding by g-mail is activated with the radio button it will not be a retroactive situation for all previous messages.

I sent a third test and almost immediately it was, indeed, forwarded to the Yahoo account.

HOWEVER......back to the term "alias".

II) if one goes to Yahoo one sees that the use of the term "alias" is....what you mentioned....the letter N or, in my case woodsmoke.

So......the point of all this is:

a) the alias system works
b) there are two uses of the term "alias", that is a) an e-mail address to which one wants to forward an incoming e-mail to Kontact and b) another "name" to use in things like chatrooms to "hide" the "name" that one does not want people to see.

Hope this helps a little, if not please ask and SR, or someone else more knowledgable than I can help.

woodsmoke

[ptoche]

Re: setting up kmail

thanks woodsmoke for this thorough report and feedback!

hey don't worry about "addy" where I live we don't even have postal codes (perhaps you call them postcodes or zip codes)

Your two definitions of alias are eye opening. You see I thought an alias was like a shortcut, say you type "me" instead of your own email address sort of thing. So I was way off, there was no way I could understand what was happening.

So thanks, this "forwarding" alias thing will be useful (one day when I succeed in actually sending emails, )

thanks woodsmoke, see you around!

[woodsmoke]

Re: [SOLVED] setting up kmail

You are quite welcome!

[Detonate]

Re: [SOLVED] setting up kmail

Another interesting thing about web mail providers, such as Yahoo, Gmail, etc. is that they have a filter to filter out mail from yourself if the mail comes from a mailing list. In other words, if you subscribe to a mailing list that uses mail list software such as MailMan, which is the software the one I subscribe to uses, you web mail provider recognizes that the messages you receive are sent by this software, and automatically deletes messages you post. It totally mystified me as to why I never saw the messages I posted, but others on the list saw them and often replied to them and I would get the replies, but not my original message. After months of searching I finally discovered this little known fact. I like to see the messages I post as well as the replies and all messages from the list. I searched for a way to disable this in Gmail and Yahoo, but there is no way. This does not happen if you use the email address like the ones provided by your ISP, unless your ISP also uses a web based email program as many now do. I finally figured out a workaround by subscribing to the list twice with different email addresses. One set to post only, and the other set to receive only. The reason we are still using this basic text based list program instead of moving to a more modern system such as a forum is that many of the people on this list live in places where broadband is not available and they are still on dialup. The list is devoted to my other hobby, old Toyota LandCruisers.

[SteveRiley]

Re: [SOLVED] setting up kmail

Here's the help box for the email alias field in KMail:



This feature exists so that people can possess different email addresses and still receive all their email at one location. For instance, AliceSmith@example.com might some day get married. Her organization changes her canonical email address to AliceJones@example.com. But some external people might never change their address books, so Alice's administration configures her old email address as an alias. When email for AliceSmith@ arrives, unless Alice's client knows to ask for email addressed to both AliceSmith@ and AliceJones@, email with the old address will languish on the server and never get delivered.

Woodsmoke, your experiment with forwarding Gmail to Yahoo is completely independent of what you enter in KMail's settings. KMail is just a client (or "mail user agent" in email lingo) -- it has no ability to instruct a mail server ("mail transfer agent") how to redirect messages.

Yahoo's usage of the term "alias" is incorrect here. They should call their function "shortcut names" or something to avoid exactly the confusion Ptoche describes.

[woodsmoke]

Re: [SOLVED] setting up kmail

Hi Steve.

Your second para. Yes, thanks for making that more clear. What one enables at g-mail is what will happen with the forwarding.

Your first para. on the help box. I do not see that. When I click help, I get a "documentation not found" and when I go to the KDE help site I do not see an obvious, "Find", for the term alias.

Im running Kontact 4.7.3 is yours higher with Precise?

As to Yahoo and its non-standard terminology, that is, apparently only one of it's problems according to a recent article. They have a lot of legacy stuff that has just never been fixed/updated, but they did have time to shut off a lot of the e-mail services unless one does the paid subscription.

If Yahoo goes belly up, the people that do not have a paid account will lose all those e-mails unless Yahoo opens it up for a time before the event.

[Detonate]

Re: [SOLVED] setting up kmail

Funny thing about that. I paid the $20 for the premium service on Yahoo many years ago just so I could get my email via pop3. At the end of a year, I did not renew. However I am still getting my email via POP3. They will probably shut me off some day. I have been receiving my mail POP3 for several years without paying them.

[ptoche]

Re: [SOLVED] setting up kmail

Thanks for all these tips. Steve one thing about newbies like me is that we tend to describe what we see with the wrong words!

btw I managed to set up kmail to send email, but I haven't yet tried the multiple email configuration.

One thing at a time.

cheers :-)

[SteveRiley]

Re: [SOLVED] setting up kmail

Your first para. on the help box. I do not see that. When I click help, I get a "documentation not found" and when I go to the KDE help site I do not see an obvious, "Find", for the term alias.

Yeah, my documentation is missing, too. I got that little bit of help by clicking the question mark in the upper right corner of the dialog, then clicking inside the alias pane.

Im running Kontact 4.7.3 is yours higher with Precise?

The Precise repos currently have KDE 4.7.95, which also appears as 4.8 RC1 in Help | About.

Steve one thing about newbies like me is that we tend to describe what we see with the wrong words!

That's totally OK! Usually with a bit of extra questioning we can get stuff sorted. Folks here enjoy learning and sharing.

One thing at a time.

Very wise.

[woodsmoke]

Re: [SOLVED] setting up kmail

SR
clicking the question mark and then clicking in the pane....

In my WILDEST DREAMS THAT.....NEVER occured to me!

I would just bet that you actually FOUND the pharoaoh's key in the old Atari King Tut's Tomb didn't you!

Come on...fess up....you actually found it didn't you!!!

woodneverdidfinditsmoke