Changing your GreenNet password should normally only be necessary if you have shared it with another site, since the one you will have been supplied should be strong enough. We would not advise changing it to anything weaker. However, if want to rotate your password to something new and strong, you can do this through the webmail interface.
To change your email password, please go to https://sqmail.gn.apc.org/ and log in with your username (often the part of your email address before the '@' sign) and your original password. This is also accessible from the "webmail" button on the top right of the GreenNet home
page.
Then click on "Options" at the top of the web page, and about halfway down on the right you should see "Change Password". Click this. Re-enter your old password, and enter your chosen new password twice, then click "Submit".
Please do choose a reasonably secure password - this can be formed from a mnemonic, random letters and digits, or a combination of at least three words. Single words that can be guessed in "dictionary attacks" are never suitable for passwords online. If you have any reason to think your password has been compromised, or you have lost your password, please let us know as soon as possible by phone or by emailing support@gn.apc.org.
After that you may be logged out of Squirrelmail and if you want to use Squirrelmail again, may need to close your browser, reopen it, retype your new password and then log in. You may get a confusing warning saying the old password does not match (this seems to occur if you press the "submit" button twice) - just log out, go back to the login page, and try your username with the new password.
Changing in e-mail clients
You will of course then need to update the password on your desktop and mobile devices. If you are prompted for the new password when you check email, simply remove what's there and enter your new password and you should be able tor receive and send. If you aren't prompted for the password, please see our support pages or your email program's documentation. In general you shouldn't need to do anything other than remove the old password and retype the one you entered into webmail.
See account setup for guide to setting up a new account from scratch on a variety of email clients - these will point you roughly in the direction of the passwords settings. Thunderbird and Outlook shouldn't be a problem.
For iPad or iPhone - You will need to go to the Settings icon, and tap "Mail, Contacts, Calendar", edit the account details and enter the password twice, once under "Incoming Mail Server" and once for outgoing server: to change the "Outgoing Mail Server" settings, scroll down and you may see an entry marked 'SMTP smtp.gn.apc.org >'. Tap that, and the outgoing password should be the third box down. The other settings you probably already have, and do not need changing: these typically are "Use SSL: On", "Authentication: Password" and "Port: 587". Tap "Done".
For Android, again the password needs to be entered for incoming and outgoing.
Particular e-mail client problems: Apple Mail
If you check your email in Apple Mail, you may have particular issues changing the password in the Apple Mail settings. Firstly, Mail stores the incoming password separately from the more hidden outgoing password (although they are the same for GreenNet and most other accounts). Secondly, if you are using Yosemite (OS X 10.10) or El Capitan (10.11) you may have a setting turned on that prevents effective updating of passwords.
- go to the Mail menu, then Preferences, then Accounts tab, and for all your GreenNet accounts, click on "Advanced".
- The top setting may be "Automatically detect and maintain account settings"; if so, make sure this is not ticked.
- Go back to "Account information" close the Preferences dialogue box (or select another account). This should prompt you whether to save changes - answer yes. This may attempt to connect immediately and ask for a password, which you can enter or ignore.
- Open Mail > Preferences once again. If you have not been able to receive email, please re-enter your new password in the password box,
- Now update the outgoing mail password, necessary for sending. Under "account information" for the concerned account, look at the bottom setting, "Outgoing mail server (SMTP)". Take a note of what is set there (a reference to an outgoing server), then click on it, and from the drop-down list, choose "Edit SMTP server list".
- Now select the server that you had notes in the previous step, click on the "Advanced" tab (assuming it is using the GreenNet server, smtp.gn.apc.org, "Use default ports" and "Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)" should be on.). The username will be all letters or digits.
- Remove the sending password, and replace with the new password you have chosen. Click the "Save" button to close the outgoing mail server dialogue.
- Send a test message to yourself.
See also How to Enable SMTP Authentication for Macintosh OS X Mail and I am receiving email fine, but I cannot send messages.