How do you see/change the email ports in W10 Mobile?

[HoosierDaddy]

My ISP (Cox) sent an email saying customers may need to change ports used and security settings in email clients or not be able to send/receive email after a certain date.

I checked our PCs and one did needed a change to one account. But when I went to check our numerous W10 Mobile phones, I can't find those setting anywhere.

How can I find out what ports and security settings are being used and if they need to be changed, how do you change them. No problem finding where this should be, there just isn't any place to see/change these items anywhere under account settings.

Cox has links for instructions for changing them in Android or iPhones but surprise surprise no mention of Windows Phones, not that it should really be needed since all devices will need to use the same ports and settings Cox documents for other devices.

And all our phones have been getting sporadic notices that our email account settings are out of date for many months but few and far between and if you click on the notice, nothing happens. And the email has always worked perfectly. Now I'm wondering if these notices are somehow related to the ports used or security settings.

 

[nate0]

Re: How do you see/change the email ports or security in W10 Mobile?

My ISP (Cox) sent an email saying customers may need to change ports used and security settings in email clients or not be able to send/receive email after a certain date.

I checked our PCs and one did needed a change to one account. But when I went to check our numerous W10 Mobile phones, I can't find those setting anywhere.

How can I find out what ports and security settings are being used and if they need to be changed, how do you change them. No problem finding where this should be, there just isn't any place to see/change these items anywhere under account settings.

Cox has links for instructions for changing them in Android or iPhones but surprise surprise no mention of Windows Phones, not that it should really be needed since all devices will need to use the same ports and settings Cox documents for other devices.

And all our phones have been getting sporadic notices that our email account settings are out of date for many months but few and far between and if you click on the notice, nothing happens. And the email has always worked perfectly. Now I'm wondering if these notices are somehow related to the ports used or security settings.

Good question. Might just need to add the account back and let it autodiscover the cox servers again.
The ports might be configured automatically after you choose imap/pop setup. In Outlook go to the add account button. Select Advanced Setup, then instead of Exchange/ActiveSync Chose Internet email. Set it up from there and see?

 

[mggm100]

Re: How do you see/change the email ports or security in W10 Mobile?

Are you looking for something like this? It is in the settings for ATT mail in my Lumia 950 XL. You have to get to "Advanced Mail Settings"

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Re: How do you see/change the email ports or security in W10 Mobile?

Are you looking for something like this? It is in the settings for ATT mail in my Lumia 950 XL. You have to get to "Advanced Mail Settings" View attachment 138530

That's exactly what I am referring to. Notice no place to specify the ports for incoming and outgoing mail on the servers. My ISP is telling me I must be using specific ports AND that I was currently not using them. BUT they never said which devices weren't using the right ports, just that at least one wasn't. And one PC was using different ports (that the ISP had advised at one point in time).

So basically, I have no idea if our phones are using the correct ports.

I suppose its possible that some inviolate standard says that if a server is using SSL it MUST use port 465 for SMTP and 993 for incoming IMAP. That might explain why MS wouldn't give the option to set them, but if you uncheck all the boxes below the SMTP server URL, you still don't get an option to specify ports.

At one point you could specify ports in WM10. I remember doing it. But that ability disappeared at some point. Hopefully because it wasn't needed. But without anything to tell users it isn't needed or at least displaying what ports are being used, they get left not knowing if their service will die when their ISP changes the ports they use as they are in my case.

Does anyone know how to at least see what ports are being used; some kind of logging/analysis app for the phone?

 

[nate0]

Re: How do you see/change the email ports or security in W10 Mobile?

That's exactly what I am referring to. Notice no place to specify the ports for incoming and outgoing mail on the servers. My ISP is telling me I must be using specific ports AND that I was currently not using them. BUT they never said which devices weren't using the right ports, just that at least one wasn't. And one PC was using different ports (that the ISP had advised at one point in time).

So basically, I have no idea if our phones are using the correct ports.

I suppose its possible that some inviolate standard says that if a server is using SSL it MUST use port 465 for SMTP and 993 for incoming IMAP. That might explain why MS wouldn't give the option to set them, but if you uncheck all the boxes below the SMTP server URL, you still don't get an option to specify ports.

At one point you could specify ports in WM10. I remember doing it. But that ability disappeared at some point. Hopefully because it wasn't needed. But without anything to tell users it isn't needed or at least displaying what ports are being used, they get left not knowing if their service will die when their ISP changes the ports they use as they are in my case.

Does anyone know how to at least see what ports are being used; some kind of logging/analysis app for the phone?

The ports are listed there in his picture after the colon. His is using ports 993 and 465. Are those fields not editable?

The way it is written there is just another way it can be written out instead having the UI have a seperate field for it.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Re: How do you see/change the email ports or security in W10 Mobile?

The ports are listed there in his picture after the colon. His is using ports 993 and 465. Are those fields not editable?

The way it is written there is just another way it can be written out instead having the UI have a seperate field for it.

I never even looked at those fields in that screen shot because I was focusing on where the port number field was. There was a field for that in the past. But to answer your question: No, my settings do not reference ports in the server URL fields (see below).

Since my fields didn't include any port, I had no idea you could add a port number to the URL. If only I paid more attention to what I thought were irrelevant in mggm100's settings. Forest for the trees.

So it seems Cox's omission of instructions for Windows phones wasn't as harmless as I thought.

Glad the answer is out here now. Hopefully the other Cox customers with Windows phones find this when searching for the answer.

Thanks Nate and mggm100.

 

[nate0]

@HoosierDaddy
So did you test it already?

 

[HoosierDaddy]

@HoosierDaddy
So did you test it already?

Yes. Works...eventually. Gives some cryptic message first try with no help. But account maintenance shows an option to "fix" the account and if you click on it, you have to re-enter your password. It gives no indication of what it did (if anything) but email works after that.

 

[nate0]

OK. Good deal. Did you check that your manual port settings stuck around after the fix account was tapped? Just curious....

 

[HoosierDaddy]

OK. Good deal. Did you check that your manual port settings stuck around after the fix account was tapped? Just curious....

Yep

 

[HoosierDaddy]

And all our phones have been getting sporadic notices that our email account settings are out of date for many months but few and far between and if you click on the notice, nothing happens. And the email has always worked perfectly. Now I'm wondering if these notices are somehow related to the ports used or security settings.

Those were not related to port changes. The phone email client posts that notice any time the client tries to sync and the email server doesn't respond for ANY reason. Basically, the notice is 100 percent wrong since the problems were temporary ones on the server end. Cox's email servers are notorious for micro outages. I'm guessing not enough bandwidth or processing power for peak loads.