Ok, as advised, I reinstalled exim. I filled in the passwd.client file and tried to configure exim; got no errors with the update and restarting. However, whatever I do, I still get errors about insecure server and unable to authenticate to smtp server. obviously I'm missing something here but I haven't really found a step-by-step description of what I'm supposed to do so it's hard to know what I might have skipped. -- Cheryl "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."