How to resolve Entourage Error 3259 “An operation on the server timed out”

A popular email client for Mac is Entourage. Manufactured by Microsoft, Entourage has tons of features such as emails, notes, contacts, calendar and project manager. Entourage is quite popular as a reliable personal information manager. Entourage has also been designed to work as a client for Microsoft Exchange.

When MS Entourage user tries to send or receive any email an error is encountered that says:

“An operation on the server timed out. The server may be down, overloaded, or there may be too much net traffic.

Error: 3259”

Cause:

This error message keeps popping up time and again making it difficult for Entourage users to send or receive any mail. A number of reasons are behind this error. Some of them include:

1.A bad SMTP configuration will result in this error at the time of receiving emails.
2.If an incorrect port number is set for outgoing connections, it will result in error 3259.
3.It can also be triggered by authentication problems by the SMTP.
4.Another factor causing this could be server error.
5.Corruption in the Entourage application can generate error 3259.

Solution:

To carry out Entourage repair follow these steps:

1.Ensure that you are connected to the internet. Try to sign in to your account using the web based application.
2.Change the SMTP port to 587.
For Entourage 2008
1.Start Entourage.
2.Click Tools -> Accounts. Double click the account you want to set up. Go to Sending mail section, choose Click here for advanced sending options.
3.Check the Override default SMTP port check box and make the port value 587.
4.Clear Outlook and try to send an email.
For Entourage 2004
1.Start Entourage.
2.Click Tools -> Accounts.
3.Select account, click Edit.
4.Go to Account Settings tab. In the Sending mail section, type mail.your-domain-name.com in the SMTP server field.
5.Choose Click here for advanced sending options.
6.Check the Override default SMTP port check box and make the port value 587.
7.To close the Edit Account window, click the small box in the upper left corner. Click Ok.

If this solution does not help, you can create a new user account. However, if it is a case of Entourage corruption, then you need an Entourage Repair tool. You can also try to rebuild Entourage database using the inbuilt Database Utility. But if that does not help, third party Entourage Repair tools can help and recover all the user data hassle free.