Setting up Microsoft Entourage to work with NCSA's email setup

Prerequisites:

It is assumed that you are using the following when using this documentation:

Mac OS X 10.3.x
Microsoft Entourage 2004
An active NCSA kerberos account

1. Entourage Setup Assistant - Welcome

When you first open Entourage, the Entourage Setup Assistant should open up in a wizard window.

Choose "want to start using Entourage without importing anything" unless you're upgrading from another email client.

To continue on to the next step, click the right arrow in the lower right corner of the window.

2. Setup a Mail Account

Enter your NCSA email address in the E-mail address field.

To continue on to the next step, click the right arrow in the lower right corner of the window.

3. Automatic Configuration

Entourage tries to configure your email settings automatically based on your email address. This only works with the most popular email accounts, like hotmail, etc. You should see a message saying that the Automatic Configuration Failed. This is normal for NCSA email accounts.

To continue on to the next step, click the right arrow in the lower right corner of the window.

4. Verify and Complete Settings

Your name: (your name as you'd like it displayed in email)
E-mail address: (your NCSA email address)
Account ID: (your NCSA kerberos username)
Password: (leave blank)
Incoming mail server: pop.ncsa.uiuc.edu
Incoming mail server type: POP
Outgoing mail server: smtp.ncsa.uiuc.edu

If your computer is a portable computer and you will be checking your email with this computer outside of NCSA facilities, you may want to change your Outgoing Mail Server to ex1.ncsa.uiuc.edu to allow you to send email when outside the NCSA networks.

To continue on to the next step, click the right arrow in the lower right corner of the window.

5. Don't Bother With Verify Settings

The next step in the Entourage Setup Assistant is to verify your settings. This step won't work yet because NCSA's setup requires some advanced options that you'll have to update after completing this Setup Assistant wizard.

To continue on to the next step, click the right arrow in the lower right corner of the window.

6. Setup Complete (Not Really)

While this is the last step in the Entourage Setup Assistant, you aren't quite finished yet. Your email won't work till you update some advanced account options.

You can choose to edit your Account name. This name is used to reference your NCSA email account.

To complete the Setup Assistant and continue with your setup, click the Finish button in the lower right corner of the window.

7. Advanced Account Settings

Now that you've completed the basic account settings, you now need to set some advanced account settings that weren't available in the Setup Assistant.

Select Account Settings from the main Entourage menu.

8. Edit Your NCSA Account

In the Accounts window select your NCSA email account, then the Edit icon in the windows toolbar.

9. Advanced Receiving Options

The Edit Account window should open up the Account Settings tab by default. The displayed settings in the Account Settings tab should already be setup correctly from the Entourage Setup Assistant that you completed earlier.

There is one change that needs to be made on the Account Settings. Click on the Click here for advanced receiving options button.

In the Advanced Receiving Options popup window, check the This POP service requires a secure connection (SSL) option.

10. Advanced Account Options (optional)

This step is optional. If you want to keep copies of your recent mail on the NCSA email servers so that you can access it from other computers, you can check the Leave a copy of each message on the server. If you choose this, be sure to check the Delete messages from the server after option and enter as few days as necessary in the days field.

You don't want to store any more mail than necessary on the NCSA mail servers. The more mail you save on the servers, the longer it takes to check and download your email.

11. Close Account Edit Window

You are now finished with the advanced account settings in Entourage. Click the OK button in the lower right corner of the Edit Account window and go back to the main Entourage application window.

12. Trusting NCSA's Root SSL Certificate

Before you can check your mail, you first need to setup your Mac so that it will work with NCSA's security certificate. NCSA has created its own secure certificate to encrypt your mail as it is downloaded from the server. By default only a few commercial certificate authorities (Thawte, Verisign, etc.) are configured by OS X to be trusted. You need to add NCSA's root certificate to the OS X Keychain:

Download and save the NCSA Root Certificate to your computer: http://ca.ncsa.uiuc.edu/4a6cd8b1.0
You may need to rename this so that it has a file extension of ".crt" or ".cer".
Open the Utilities folder in the Applications folder on your computer and locate the Keychain Access application. You do not need to start Keychain Access.
Drag the NCSA root certificate from step a above to the Keychain Access application icon. Root certificates must be installed one at a time.
In the resulting Add Certificates dialog box, click X509 Anchors, and then click OK.

You don't need to have the certificate installed for pop.ncsa.uiuc.edu.

13. Check Your Mail

You're finally ready to check your email with Entourage. Go back to the main Entourage application window and choose Send and Receive -> Send and Receive All from under the Tools menu.

A popup window should prompt for your password. After entering your NCSA password, your email should begin to transfer.