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Last updated 11/08/06

Troubleshooting SMTP Authentication using Telnet

1) Open a telnet tool on your mail server.
a) On most PC you can open a dos window and:
Enter "telnet"
Enter "set LOCAL_ECHO"
Enter "open mail.YourDomain.com 25" (replace YourDomain.com with your domain)
Enter "HELO"
Enter "AUTH LOGIN"

You now need to enter your email and then your password encoded in BASE64.
For help converting your email and password to Base64 click on our conversion tool.
Enter your email and click "Encode" copy that value in the telnet session and press ENTER
Now enter you password in the conversion tool  and copy that value in the telnet session and press ENTER

If you have successfully authenticated the server will return: "235 authenticated"

Enter "MAIL FROM YourUserName@YourDomain.com" (replace YourUserName@YourDomain.com with your email address)
Enter "RCPT TO  DestinationEmail" (replace DestinationEmail with the destination email)
Enter "DATA"
Enter "Subject: Test using telnet"
Enter ""  (Send a blank line to separate the headers from the message body)
Enter "This is just a test to see if I can SMTP auth from my PC"
Enter "."

The server will return: "250 Message queued"
Enter "quit"

Close the DOS window you are now done.
Ask the person at: "DestinationEmail" to verify that they received the message.