I've used Thunderbird for email for a few years now, and I thought I'd give Outlook 2007 a try. I am interested in trying Outlook as is has a better calendar than Thunderbird, and I have been having issues with Thunderbird and one of my accounts that I would like to see if Outlook resolves. I have multiple email accounts:

1) An Exchange account hosted at University (Uni account).
2) An IMAP account hosted by a NZ provider (Work account).
3) (I have more, but two will suffice for this example)

I use my laptop at multiple locations, and therefore send emails using different smtp servers, depending on my location and ISP:

a) At work, I use smtpr.xtra.co.nz to send emails from all accounts (ISP is Xtra).
b) At uni, I use the University exchange server to send email from all accounts.
c) At home, I use smtp.clear.net.nz to send all emails (ISP is ClearNet).

Thunderbird sets email accounts up so that for each account, I can choose an IMAP/Exchange server for receiving emails. When sending emails, I can set each account to either a) always send email using a fixed smtp server, or b) send emails using a global smtp server preference. This works perfectly for me. I use the SmtpSelect add-on for Thunderbird, which allows me to quickly select a smtp server for all email sending using a drop-down list on the toolbar.

Looking at Outlook 2007, it seems like I have to assign a fixed smtp server for each account I use. This causes a problem when (say) I am connected to the Internet with ClearNet, but I want to send an email from my work account. Xtra's smtp server won't let me log in because I am not connected to the Internet through Xtra (this is fair enough). It therefore seems that each time I change locations, I would need to edit the account settings of all my accounts and change the smtp server based on my location - this is obviously not convenient.

I have Googled briefly and it seems like there is no simple, easy way to set Outlook up for emailing from multiple locations, where each location requires a different, global smtp server preference. The only workarounds I saw involved using dummy accounts, and involved a lot of fiddling about.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I assumed because it was so easy in Thunderbird, Outlook would be the same, perhaps this is not the case.

Cheers,

Ash