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Opening the Command Prompt or a terminal

Valid for: Mail Basic and Mail Business

You can use the Command Prompt in Windows or a terminal on macOS and Linux to run commands, for example, to test the availability of our email servers with the ping or telnet command. This article shows you how to open the Command Prompt or a terminal on each operating system.

For instructions on running these tests, see Testing the availability of email servers using Ping and Testing the availability of the email servers using Telnet.

Open the Command Prompt or PowerShell in Windows

Option 1

  • Type cmd in the search box on the taskbar.

  • In the search results, click Command Prompt. The Command Prompt opens.

Option 2

  • Right click on the Windows Start menu.

  • Click on Terminal. Windows PowerShell will open.

Open Terminal on macOS

On macOS, the Terminal app is located in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder. You can open it in one of the following ways:

Option 1

  • Press the Command (⌘) + Space bar key combination. Spotlight opens.

  • Type Terminal and press the Return key. Terminal opens.

Option 2

  • Click Finder in the Dock.

  • In the sidebar, click Applications.

  • Open the Utilities folder.

  • Double-click Terminal. Terminal opens.

Open a terminal (shell) on Linux

Depending on your desktop environment (e.g. GNOME, KDE Plasma, or Xfce), you open the terminal in different ways. The following methods work in common Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and Linux Mint.

Option 1

Press the Ctrl + Alt + T key combination. The terminal opens. This key combination is the default in Ubuntu and Linux Mint, among others.

Option 2

  • Open the application search of your desktop environment:

    GNOME: Press the Super key. On most keyboards, this is the key with the Windows logo.

    KDE Plasma: Press the Alt + Space bar key combination.

    Xfce: Press the Alt + F2 key combination.

  • Type Terminal.

  • In the search results, click the terminal application. Depending on your distribution and desktop environment, it is called Terminal, Console, or Konsole (KDE Plasma). The terminal opens.

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