I have been trying to help friend who has an elderly iPad and finds that although she can receive email, she cannot send it. Her ISP is Plusnet and her email account is IMAP. We have checked the passwords in the settings on the iPad, but when she tries to send an email there is the message "there was an error trying to connect to this email account". Frustratingly it does not say what the error is. I did wonder whether the email account could be blocked because our friend has lots of stored emails.
It's the SMTP server settings that Mick is referring to and I agree that it shouldn't be blocked by lots of E-mails. There's always the possibility that your friend hasn't paid or has exceeded some contractual limit, though you'd expect a more specific warning.
However... I was going to look up the SMTP settings for you but everything PlusNet is inaccessible at the moment so perhaps they have bigger problems?
Part of the problem seems to stem from when she asker her grandson who is allegedly very computer savvy and who contacted plus net. Originally she could send emails from her own home but not when she visited her daughter and yes she did connect to her daughter's network. However after the grandson's conversation with Plusnet and the consequent 'tweaks' they suggested she cannot send from anywhere now
Long ago, Plus Net used to require a password when you sent from anywhere other than the landline they provide broadband on. If you didn't use your password, they would not know it was you so not allow sending. When you were at home, they did not require a password as they knew it was you as it arrived with them down the line you were paying them for. This meant that in order to send email, you had to constantly change between password and no password depending on where you were. I was under the impression that they now accept password from home swell as when out and about. However, it sounds as if it's something along those lines causing this issue. But we're only working with "snippets" of information not a complete list of settings, so I can only guess.
It's common for ISPs' outgoing mail servers only to allow mail from within their network (which includes a user's home LAN). This is to counter abuse by spammers.
Perhaps the 'tweaks' have had the opposite effect to that intended (it sounds like they were setting some kinds of exceptions on her particular account)? It may be a case of having to go back to Plusnet support since the account may be non-standard.
Lionel Ogden 