How to Setup SMTP Outgoing Email Server in LibreOffice Writer

When you start to explore the advanced features of LibreOffice, such as the mail-merge feature, where you can create a batch of personalized documents in minutes, you start to believe that the program might also have an in-built email sending capability.

However, LibreOffice doesn’t have a full-fledged email sending feature like other office applications. Although it can connect with any SMTP email server to send bulk emails to multiple recipients, this feature only works as a mail-merge.

Despite the ability to connect with any SMTP server, the feature hasn’t really developed to its full potential and crashes most of the time. In short, you simply can’t rely on it for serious use.

Recently, I was reading a few discussions on the issue in the official LibreOffice forum, and I found out that after the 7.3 version, the email sending feature completely stops working and makes the whole LibreOffice freeze and unresponsive. However, if you really want to see if it works on your computer, please follow the steps below.

Open a New Text Document

While configuring an outgoing SMTP email server in LibreOffice is quite simple, the options from where you will be configuring it, are kinda buried under the LibreOffices Writer specific settings. For that, you must open an existing document or create a new one. Click on File > New > Text Document

Open the Settings Window

To open the setting window (also called The Options Dialog), you got two options –

Step 1: Select Tools > Options from the top menu bar. (Note: if you’ve changed to a different user interface, then click on the upper hamburger menu > Options)

Step 2: You can use the keyboard shortcut for accessing the settings as well, simply press Alt + F12 on the keyboard.

Setting Up the SMTP Email Server

Once the setting window appears, navigate to LibreOffice Writer > Mail Merge Email. Here you will be asked to provide the outgoing server details of your email provider, such as the SMTP server name and its port number.

Note: Every email provider has different server names and port numbers. The following screenshot shows the details of Hostingers SMTP server. So, if you’re using Gmail or Outlook, then visit the following links to get their SMTP server details.

• Gmails SMTP Server Details
• Outlooks SMTP Server Details

Testing the Server Connection

After you have entered the SMTP server details into their corresponding fields, it is time to check if LibreOffice can communicate with the server successfully or not.

Click Test Settings button, and a new window will open with a success message. If you still get any error, double check if your given server details were correct, or read the provided error log to see if there is anything else causing the issue.