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Level 1

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How can I configure Mail in Mountain Lion to default the "from" field to match the account indicated by the "to" field of the message being replied to?

I own my own domain, under which I have several email addresses configured that all wind up being forwarded to a single account. With Mail in Snow Leopard and Lion, when I would reply to a received e-mail, the "from" field would be set corresponding to the e-mail address the original message had been sent to, making it easy to ensure the correct address is used. But in Mountain Lion, it appears that when I reply to any message, the "from" field of the reply is now being set based on the account which received the message. As such, I must now remember to manually change the "from" field everytime I reply to a message, or it will be sent out using my single account e-mail ID, which I actually never want to use.

Does anyone know of a way to get Mail from Mountain Lion to default the "from" field in a reply based on the "to" field of the message being replied to, as older versions of Mail used to do?

Mail-OTHER, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Jul 26, 2012 7:51 PM

87 replies

Jul 27, 2012 4:56 PM in response to parna

PARNA...

Thanks... Nice fix... This seems to be working for me on Mountain Lion. Now I only wish I could also solve this problem with IOS on my iPhone.

Jul 27, 2012 5:03 PM in response to parna

parna,

nice idea - however, this is not going to work if you are actually using multiple accounts and consolidate them onto a single IMAP server manually (using rules in Mail) - replying to any message located on an IMAP server now uses the IMAP's account address in the From - regardless of the original address the message was sent to (this worked correctly in all versions of Mail prior to Mountain Lion). It took me a couple of days to realize that I dend out tons of emails from the wrong address :-(

I opened a bug report with Apple about this - rdar://report/11975591

Andreas

Monkiineko Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 27, 2012 6:15 PM in response to parna

Thanks for all the valuable input Toonetown, Parna, and all. I didn't know about the trick of putting multiple e-mail addresses with-in a single account (referenced above), rather I had multiple separate accounts registered with Mail, each with one e-mail address associated.

I tried changing my Mail accounts set up around to have multiple e-mail addresses listed under a single account instead, and found that this does indeed work to get the correct e-mail address set up automatically in a reply. However it has a problem that there's only one "full name" for the account that always seems to get used, even if a full name is included in the email address list (as Andreas pointed out). This means that I'd wind up sending out replies from the correct e-mail address, but with an incorrect full name (i.e. my full name is my real, full name for professional e-mails, yet I use a less formal nick name for e-mails in response to forum posts and such).

I then stumbled across this useful (though a little technical) tidbit:

http://superuser.com/questions/122352/can-i-change-the-from-name-and-address-wit hout-going-into-mail-apps-preferenc

If you scroll down a bit you'll find an answer that discusses editing the Accounts.plist file to add a new "EmailAliases" section to an account. By doing this I was able to configure multiple aliases under an account INSTEAD OF adding the addresses to the email address field in the account in Mail's preferences. And these aliases could be configured with different full names. Also, these aliases appear to get correctly used when replying to e-mails that were sent to them. So, while ugly to configure (Apple NEEDS to add a UI for this), it does appear to work, and I no longer need to manually change the from address all the time when replying to e-mails under Mountain Lion.

Note:

During the testing of this I think I've found another bug though... If I try to reply to a message that was received from another e-mail address configured under the same account, then it appears the from and to fields are reversed from what you'd expect. I.e. Have both a@blah.com and b@blah.com configured as aliases under the same account ; receive a message from a@blah.com to b@blah.com ; hit reply and the new message will also be from a@blah.com to b@blah.com rather than the expected from b@blah.com to a@blah.com. This is admitedly a border case that just hampers testing e-mail configurations a bit.

parna

Level 2

295 points

Jul 27, 2012 6:41 PM in response to Monkiineko

That is all beyond my needs, but I am sure useful to others.

However, I think you can add aliases in iCloud for the same thing. In the iCloud account in Mail/Preferences/Accounts, under where it says Email Address (see screen shot in my post above) there is a button to edit Aliases. That will take you to iCloud, read the help there and it will tell you about them. Not sure if this is what you are after or not, but you don't have to edit any plist files. It may be useful to others at least.

Jul 27, 2012 6:51 PM in response to parna

I'm a bit lost here. I have two main email address - both gmail. I can't route them through iCloud can I?

Monkiineko Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 27, 2012 6:54 PM in response to parna

That "Edit Email Aliases..." button from your screen shot does look like it likely would do the trick for those using iCloud. Unfortunately that button doesn't show up in my POP account configuration in Mail, so I had to use the manual plist editing technique.

I prefer to have all of my e-mails going to my own mail server, rather than routing all my personal mail to Apple's servers. Not that I believe Apple has any nefarious plans with digging through users' private e-mails, but why tempt them when I can manage my e-mail myself. 🙂

parna

Level 2

295 points

Jul 27, 2012 6:56 PM in response to Monkiineko

At least we learnt something from all this!! 🙂

parna

Level 2

295 points

Jul 27, 2012 7:03 PM in response to nautilus2104

Yes, I have a gmail account that I have forwarded to my iCloud account.

Log into your google account (online) and you will see near the top right a gear sort of thing. Use that to go to settings

Then across the top you will see "Forwarding and POP/IMAP"

Monkiineko Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 27, 2012 6:59 PM in response to nautilus2104

Nautilus,

Have a look at this link to see how you can forward mail from both your gmail accounts to iCloud (or any other account):

http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10957

Jul 27, 2012 7:01 PM in response to Monkiineko

Thank you! I'll give it a go.

Jul 27, 2012 7:15 PM in response to nautilus2104

Yes! Worked a treat through iCloud. Thanks all.

Deb

parna

Level 2

295 points

Jul 27, 2012 7:24 PM in response to nautilus2104

Great. I like to have all my email addresses come through iCloud as it is so convenient. Any new installation and there they are automatically.

Jul 27, 2012 7:25 PM in response to parna

I spoke to soon. It work with one but not the other. Sigh.

Deb

parna

Level 2

295 points

Jul 27, 2012 7:26 PM in response to nautilus2104

It will. Just recheck what you have done.

AuPhalanx

Level 2

435 points

Jul 29, 2012 1:14 PM in response to Monkiineko

I am going to reiterate much of what has been posted here and also include my configuration and the error/bug I have been experiencing. I am repeating things so that we can be sure that we're all on the same page as well as to explain to those who may potential help as to the issues that we;re experiencing.

I have a total of eleven (11) e-mail addresses, which include my iCloud account. The majority of the addresses are POP3. I have that many addresses because of my business and each e-mail is for a specific web site. In order to sync my e-mails across the multiple computers I have, I created a rule that would move every e-mail I received to the iCloud account.

In Lion, even though the e-mail was moved to the iCloud account, when I replied to an e-mail, it would reply from the account to which the e-mail was sent. Thus, if an e-mail was sent to 'tony@mydomain.com', it would be moved to the iCloud account (which would sync it among all computers). Replying to it would be sent from 'tony@mydomain.com' and use that server and its settings.

This has been broken by Mountain Lion and Mail 6.0. Now, an e-mail is received and moved to iCloud. But, when replying, the reply-from address is now the iCloud address -- NOT the e-mail address to which the e-mail was sent.

This STILL works in Lion. I have a machine running Lion and have been using it side-by-side with MountainLion.

Now, a couple of things I have discovered.

While entering e-mail aliases into the e-mail address of the iCloud settings seems to work, it actually causes a couple of problems. First, it causes the iCloud syncing to not work -- the "Mail" box becomes unchecked in System Preferences for iCloud and won't stay checked so long as the "foreign" (non-iCloud) e-mail address is in the account settings for iCloud.

Second, the server settings for the outgoing e-mail get broken. It's weird. E-mails don't send at times.

I sincerely hope that Apple fixes this. People may suggest that I use IMAP accounts to sync my e-mails. That is not an option. The web host I use only allows a certain number of processes to run. With all my e-mail accounts, checking my e-mail would easily blow me past that number.

Well, that's the situation. If someone can shed some light with their expertise, it would be greatly appreciated. I will also be filing a bug report with Apple. I hope that they cane fix this in the .1 release.

All the BEST!

How can I configure Mail in Mountain Lion to default the "from" field to match the account indicated by the "to" field of the message being replied to?