ASP FormMail, Part VII

OK. I'm learning more
Microsoft terminology.

This post refers to a
valid email address.

Unable to Relay Email

Obviously, I know what a
valid email address
is. I've had the same email
address for the last 7 years.
I consider my email address
to be very much valid.

So what does this mean?

Here are the keywords from
the article:

Make sure the MailMessage.From
is a valid email address that
exists on the SmtpMail.SmtpServer.

OK. Now I'm starting to understand.

In the culture of Microsoft products,
a valid email address is one
that exists on your own email server.

This seems like such a vague term to
me, valid email address.

I guess I understand. It's a form of
shorthand.

However, this term has thrown me off
because I've been unwilling to admit
that my email address, which i've used
for the last 7 years, is not a
valid email address.

That's what happens when you change
programming cultures or computer
cultures. You have to learn a whole
new terminology.

I feel I now know what a valid
email address is in Microsoft-
speak. It is a local email address.

Of course, I could be wrong about
all of this.

However, I've seen the term valid
email address serveral times on
several different websites.

Each time, they seem to be saying,
make sure you have a valid email
address.

At first, I skim-read this part
because I naturally assumed that
my email address, which I've used
to send and receive thousands of
emails over the past 7 years,
is valid.

Apparently, my email address is
not a valid email address
in this context.

Finally! The above link sheds a
little light on the frequent use
of the term valid email address
in the literature.

By the way, this series of posts
about ASP FormMail starts
with this post:

Choosing an ASP FormMail Program

Here's an update:

I now realize I've unfairly maligned
IIS. Because it wants me to
supply a local email address, I'm
assuming that that's something
unusual.

It is not!

It would not matter what kind of
mail server it is. A mail server
is always going to require SMTP
authentication for a non-native
email address that is unknown to
it.

How could I have thought that
this was a Microsoft issue?

I guess because I've always
had such an easy easy time of
it using NMS FormMail that
I've developed this illusion
that FormMail programs don't
need SMTP authentication.

I'm shaking my head now. Can't
believe I was thinking that.

I say more about this in my
next post:

ASP FormMail, Part VIII

Ed Abbott