Gmail workaround for Orange/Freeserve/Wanadoo customers with email problems

February 13th, 2007 - 13:26 | 32 comments

A few months ago it became apparent that people with Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange accounts were having problems with email. My post on the subject has had a lot of attention. The company’s email servers were repeatedly listed on spam databases, and email providers all over the world were therefore rejecting all received email. F/W/O showed no interest in fixing the problem. I don’t know whether it’s working yet, but I don’t really care - their service was appalling and I don’t recommend anybody use them again. Unfortunately there was little that could be done at the time without changing email address, a process which is never fun. Recent updates to Google’s Gmail service, however, have provided a way around the problem without changing address.

It works by replacing your current email system with Google’s free Gmail service. Gmail can now automatically download your F/W/O emails, as well as make it look like all email you send is coming from your old F/W/O address. It means moving to a web-based email system (or not, with a little more configuration - see optional section) and giving your email password to Google (I personally don’t think this is anything to worry about), but email recipients should notice no difference and it should work exactly the same as before, except that all email is actually coming from Google’s servers, which won’t be rejected as spam.

Initial experiments suggest this should work:

Go to www.gmail.com and sign up for a free email address
Log into your gmail account (called Google Mail in the UK), then go to ‘Settings’, and the ‘Accounts’ tab
New users should have a “Get mail from other accounts” option (if this option isn’t there try changing the display language to ‘English (US)’ in the ‘General’ tab). Click ‘Add another mail account’.
Enter your F/W/O email address and click to continue.
Enter your F/W/O username (this is your email address, as far as I know) and password. The POP server is ‘pop.orangehome.co.uk’ on port 110. You might want to tick ‘Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server’ while everything is getting set up, then remove it later. People familiar with Gmail can apply labels etc.. When all details are entered, click to continue.
It will ask if you want to be able to send email as ‘[your address]‘, click ‘Yes’, and then ‘Next Step’
Enter the name you want emails to appear to come from, and click ‘Next Step’
It will need to send a verification email to ensure you’re who you say you are. Click ‘Send Verification’, go check your email as normal, and follow the instructions.
Once you’ve verified the address, go back to ‘Accounts’. ‘Send mail as’ will contain a couple of different addresses. Click ‘Make default’ next to the F/W/O address.
That’s it! All email you send via Gmail will now appear to come from your F/W/O address, and Gmail will deliver all replies into your Gmail account.

I think this will do the trick. Please let me know the results if you try it…

To use Outlook Express / Outlook:

People who are using Outlook or Outlook Express (or Windows Mail, for that matter) and want to keep all their emails in one place / don’t want to use webmail can try this:

In Gmail’s settings, go to the ‘Forwarding and POP’ tab. Next to ‘POP Download’, click ‘Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on’, then ‘Save changes’.
Follow the instructions here to configure Outlook / Outlook Express (here for Outlook 2003). It’s probably wise to write down the existing configuration before changing too much over.

Email sent through Outlook/Express will appear to come from your F/W/O address as long as you’ve set it as Gmail’s default address in #9 above.

Notes:

This also lets you take advantage of Gmail’s formidable spam filters.

The changes were Google opening up to all users and releasing their POP3-fetching service, if you were wondering.

This would have been possible months ago if Orange provided an email forwarding service like normal ISPs.

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32 Responses to “Gmail workaround for Orange/Freeserve/Wanadoo customers with email problems”

1 Tom Williams Feb 13th, 2007 at 2:46 pm

It’s worth noting that the “Get mail from other accounts” option will only show up if your Gmail display language is set to “English (US)” - for some reason if it’s set to “English (UK)” the option vanishes (at least on my account).
2 Andrew Feb 13th, 2007 at 2:53 pm

Excellent point - shall update the post with that. Thanks!
3 oisin Feb 13th, 2007 at 5:00 pm

Why not just configure gmail for POP and use it as default account?
4 Andrew Feb 13th, 2007 at 5:11 pm

Well, it was long-winded already. I’d also read that Google’s SMTP always changes your return address to your gmail address, but apparently that’s not the case any more. I think I’ll add this as an option.
5 Paul Feb 14th, 2007 at 3:58 pm

of course if the domain your mail is coming from is blacklisted (something which is done on the rare occasion rather than the more common blacklisting the ip of the vulnerable mailserver sending your mail) then this won’t help.
6 Andrew Feb 14th, 2007 at 4:14 pm

Hmmm? I’m not sure I understand what you mean, there - wouldn’t it always use Google’s domain?
7 Paul Feb 15th, 2007 at 12:55 pm

“6 It will ask if you want to be able to send email as ‘[your address]’, click ‘Yes’, and then ‘Next Step’” - not if you send email as [your address] - it will come from your isp’s domain via googles mailserver.
8 Andrew Feb 15th, 2007 at 1:00 pm

…Possibly…I don’t think the blacklisted domains issue will apply to F/W/O customers, though.
9 Lady Banana Feb 18th, 2007 at 8:16 pm

I’m so pleased I came across your blog!

I have been patiently waiting for this Gmail feature for a long time having read about it several months ago. Now just changing the language from English UK to US it all shows up and works perfectly! Thanks
I will be keeping an eye on your blog for more interesting items!

LB
10 Brett Sheffield Mar 8th, 2007 at 8:09 pm

I’m glad you wrote that Andrew - saved me the job. I’ve had to explain to several clients recently why mails from their mates on Freeserve have been bouncing. I’ve now starting pointing them at your site
Cheers,

Brett
11 Andrew Mar 8th, 2007 at 11:46 pm

Glad I could help!
12 Liz Mar 19th, 2007 at 7:33 pm

Gmail will not accept the POP server you have given. Any other suggestions?
13 Andrew Mar 19th, 2007 at 8:41 pm

Just checked and it still works ok here with pop.orangehome.co.uk. Are you using your full F/W/O email address as the username?
14 Liz Mar 19th, 2007 at 8:47 pm

Yes. It’s a wanadoo.co.uk one.
15 Andrew Mar 19th, 2007 at 9:03 pm

You could try pop.wanadoo.co.uk, although I don’t think it should make a difference. It might be worth checking you can login to the Orange website with your username/password combination, just to make sure they’re correct.

If you’ve been using Outlook Express / Outlook for Wanadoo email you could check the POP server and username details in there. In OE, go to the ‘Tools’ menu, then ‘Accounts’, select your email address and go to ‘Properties’ - the ‘Servers’ tab will have the POP server and username listed. I haven’t a copy of Outlook to hand, but the process should be similar…

If all that fails, try the details in the trustworthy http://www.mail2web.com advanced login, and see if it works there.
16 James Sanford Mar 26th, 2007 at 12:44 pm

Thanks for the wonderful tips, it’s so great that you’ve made an effort to publish information on the web that will really benefit other people! Am about to try this workaround, will let you know how it goes.

regards,

James
17 Judi Robson Apr 5th, 2007 at 10:40 pm

Have had so many problems with e.mail then finally have had 6 months trouble free with fsmail. Not any more, can access my e.mail a/c via a much more convoluted process (20mins if I’m lucky) but can’t open messages. Many recipients have also said they cannot open my attachements. So. I am about to follow the above instructions and live in hope. I’ll let u know
18 Pat Powell May 28th, 2007 at 1:54 pm

I too have had same problems trying to retrieve e-mails from Orange into GMAIL, first ‘verify’ bouncing back, so GMAIL gave me the verifiction number then the latest message on bounce back from Orange ‘ server returned invalid login password’ I know I am putting in the correct one so presume this is another scam Orange have come up with to stop us changing over to GMAIL. I would cancel Orange completly but that ‘fsnet’ e-mail address I have published for clients to reach me not to mention the expence of letterheads/business cards so I need to retrieve e-mail sent to the ‘fsnet’ address if anyone out there can point me inthe right direction, many thanks
19 Ron Jun 1st, 2007 at 1:53 pm

This is fine up to a point but can it can get round the problem of having emails bounced back from my gmail account which I send to other people who are on Freeserve/Orange?
20 Lorenz Dahl Jun 18th, 2007 at 4:16 pm

How do I contact you? I need help with getting my email off the wanadoo server in France (I am in the US).
21 Litsl Oct 20th, 2007 at 1:09 pm

Excellent - huge thanks for this!

Litsl
22 Peter Oct 31st, 2007 at 7:34 am

Many thanks for this Wonga.
My F/W/O account is being swamped by spam (over 30,000 in the week). 99.9% of it comes to addresses other than mine - that is, if my address is abc@edf.freeserve.co.uk, I get spam to a6178548@edf.freeserve.co.uk, a-maximj@edf.freeserve.co.uk, etc.
I setup filters to trash everything other than my real address, which works (although the limited number of filters allowed makes this a challenge). Except that F/W/O have a ridiculous configuration where deleted files are removed only after a week, and they have a 100kb total size limit (which my endless spam blizzard fills in hours).
To crown this all, I have been so careful to guard against allowing my email to get into the sewer - what bozo that I know got hacked and my address stolen!
Beats me what is in it for the spammers to send so much filth that a user account is obliterated.
Anyway, I’ve tried the gmail setup above, all seems fine except that gmail doesn’t retrieve any F/W/O, I assume as next to none matches my real email address. Is there any way to tell gmail to bring everything over and sift out the real stuff?
Any help would be very gratefully received.
23 Andrew Oct 31st, 2007 at 11:45 am

Peter - the gmail fetcher should grab everything from your account, independent of anything before the @ symbol. So whatever@edf.freeserve.co.uk should be picked up. Have you clicked the verification email from gmail? Is your F/W/O account listed in the ‘Accounts’ page in gmail? If so, does it say ‘Last checked’, as in this shot?
24 Michael Nov 12th, 2007 at 4:22 pm

Hi thanks for the tips, but i cant get the ” get mail from other accounts ” to work. Will it still work if Orange has pulled the plug on my account as they appear to have done to so many of us old freeserve members. As this address is tied in with my web site, as im sure it is the same for many other site owners. I think it a great shame that Orange is treating people in this way.
OK enough ranting for now, how can i get any of the mail i receice from my web site that has a fsnet e-mail address.
many thanks
Michael
25 Andrew Nov 12th, 2007 at 4:37 pm

You could try retrieving your account via the orange website?
26 Michael Nov 12th, 2007 at 5:08 pm

Hi Andrew, thank you for your swift reply. I had tried to retrieve my account a many times over the last few weeks with no success. BUT. i looked at my mail rules and found that i had stopped all spam coming to me. so the server had collected 14900 junk e mails. I changed my e mail rules , received them all and deleted them.
still not working ! so i tried the GMail way. after no success.
I had a cup of tea and after went back into Outlook Express to find my FSNET mail back in place.
Was that the Wonga working ????
Thanks for all the help, i will keep this site in my Favorites.
Michael
27 Nicky Feb 29th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

Hi

I haven’t been able to access my freeserve e-mails for the last week. I usually get to them via the orange website. I have set up a google mail account but in the ‘get mail from other accounts’ option I come across an error message of ‘There was a problem connecting to mail.fsmail.net’.

Any help or advice would be gratefully received.

Thanks
Nicky
28 Shane Turner Mar 29th, 2008 at 8:08 pm

I think that errors relating to not being able to retrieve emails from Orange/Freeserve/Wanadoo accounts into Gmail is due to a problem with Orange’s servers at the moment - it’s affecting pop.wanadoo.co.uk, pop.orangehome.co.uk, mail.fsmail.net and probably a few more - I hope that Orange sort it out soon, as the SMTP servers are also affected.

(from what I have read, this problem has been going on for a few weeks now and looks set to continue for another few weeks)

Hopefully this should explain what’s currently happening and the reason for the error messages.

(I have tried pinging the appropriate servers and it comes back with timeouts - I think it’s an IP address issue as well)
29 David Owen Sep 5th, 2008 at 8:55 pm

As you will will gather I am with Freeserve (Anytime). The problem I have is that I cannot access my Microsoft outlook in or out emails.Firstly it says it doesn recognise my password, then when I go on to Orange it doesn`t recognise my address! However my wife`s address is wendy@stone158.fsnet.co.uk and hers is working perfectly!! I rang Orange this evening and firstly I couldn`t understand the guys acccent bein he was foreign and secondly he was as much use as a chocolate ashtray. Any ideas please? Replies can reach my wife`s address!!
30 dil okullari Sep 8th, 2008 at 2:02 am

thanks a lot for this nice web site. it would be better with other languages, bur thanks..
31 John Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:00 am

Just to let you know that following your excellent advice allowed me to get my girlfriends email back up and running so she could send a job application many thanks indeed !

JB

1 Brett Sheffield . com » Blog Archive » Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange spam Pingback on Mar 9th, 2007 at 12:46 am

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