What the Terms in Your Email Settings Mean

Enter SMTP server address? Reply-To email address? IMAP? Iwhat?. Find out what all the terms in your email account settings mean and what probable values are.

Name

This is simple: Your name; or, rather: the name you want to appear as your name when you send an email. This is what the recipient of a message by you will get to read as the sender. Choose whatever you like, but probably something others will recognize (unless, of course, you want to avoid just that). An entry that would qualify for me would be "Heinz Tschabitscher", but also "Email Guide" or "Prat Chett" if I wanted to.

Email Address

Your email address is what will be added to the "Name" as the sender of messages. Using this email address, others can reply quickly. It's like the phone number being sent when somebody calls you on your cell phone. You save the number under a name, which will be displayed, but under the hood the phone operates with the number of course.

As an email address, I'd use "me@example.com", for example.

Reply-To Address

This is not mandatory for sending email, but some email clients require it. Normally, you would only set the Reply-To address if its value was different from your "Email Address". If the Reply-To field is set and somebody replies to your email message, it should automatically be sent to the address in the Reply-To field.

If I'd like all replies sent to "user@example.com", for example, I'd enter this into the Reply-To field.

POP Server

A POP server stores the messages that you receive and waits for you to retrieve them. Then, they are downloaded to your computer where you can read them, reply to them, delete them and whatever else you do with or to your email. Since your messages are kept at a certain server (this may be your company's POP server, or your ISP's, for example), you have to specify it.

For my About email, the server could be named "pop.about.com".