Mail bug in Mountain Lion

Sorry, jannoteelem, but it doesn't work for me. Those boxes were already checked on for all of my accounts, except the Google IMAP account, which I switched on momentarily. There might be something to what you say, though, because after doing that, the "preferred" account which Mail wants to use as From and Reply to is now that Google account, instead of the account which it was before. And I can't change it back. Not that it matters; one is as bad as the other.

However, let me take this opportunigy to repeat here that this thread is not concerned with the SMTP server. The problem is the From and Reply to fields in the headers of a reply.

This helped me. Thanks!

The sending server doesn't necessarily determine your reply to address.

@janoteelem: If your problem was an inability to select sending addresses from the "From" field, and the action you described fixed it, that's good news.

But FWIW, I think most people are concerned with something quite different. In my case (and some others'): I have no problem freely selecting a sending address from that "From" list, whether in ML or any other version of Mail, or whether or not I've fiddled with SMTP settings. It's not an issue for me.

The problem with ML is the need to change the sending address in the first place (in situations described elsewhere in the thread). As with Lion and other versions of Mail, and every other email client I've ever seen, I expect the default sending address of a reply to be the same as the receiving address, without my having to confirm this and change it as necessary. ML Mail is the only email client I've seen that breaks this behavior.

I played around with SMTP server selection just now as you describe, and unfortunately, for me there's no effect on ML's wacky Reply behavior. Still a major bug (or inexplicably poor decision) on ML Mail's part.

I have the same problem as many of the previous posters. To reiterate:

Correct behavior: When I click "Compose" while a message in a specific inbox is highlighted, that account is used to send the new message.

Problem: When I click "Compose" while a message in the unified inbox is highlighted, the default sending account is my me.com address, regardless of which account the currently highlighted message is in.

This was never a problem before I upgraded to Mountain Lion. I will file a bug report, and I suggest you all do the same. http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

I have one solution which works for me. I use my me.com account only for storing all my mail, not for sending (or at least never yet). I had the same problem: composing new mail uses my default email account, replying uses my me.com account. I am using Mail 6.0 in Mountain Lion 10.8.1

First I set up icloud account using the outgoing mail server of my default account. This server only allows me to use my default address so if I accidently reply and forget to change my sending address in the compose drop-down box it will prompt me to choose a correct address before sending. This is only a partial solution and not good if you want to send from your icloud account (I never do, if I did, I would have to change the server).

Second step goes one further and seems to give me a proper workaround. Carryout my first step (select the default email account smtp server in icloud account setup), then in the EMail Address field of the icloud account give the email addresses as: <default account> , me@me.com

What I find then is that any reply made while an icloud mail box is selected will now use the correct address and smtp server.

Hope this helps some of you.

I'm glad that works for you Martin, but it's not a solution.

I have over a dozen email accounts and when I reply to a client, I need Mail to use the correct account. The only "solution" is for Apple to fix the bug.

davidfromgulf breeze wrote:

Read what i said,,it does NOT work this way...it works the correct way in 10.8.2

So i said "maybe its fixed in 10.8.2"

It is not fixed in 10.8.2 (12C50). I've not loaded 12C53 yet, but no dice so far... it's annoying as **** and I am tired fo begging Apple to make it work as it should.

FYI: My bug reports about both of these related bugs were closed as duplicates of 11975591 which is still listed as "open". So I believe that Apple acknowledges that this is really a bug, and they have not fixed it yet. (In contrast, another bug that I reported against Safari which was also marked as a duplicate, now has it's duplicate closed, so I suspect that Safari bug will be fixed in the next update.)

I cross my fingers hoping that you are right, jesmith.

Ok kids... I finally tried everything in here and it didn't work and then I tried messing with the smtp server and it worked so I hope this works for others that have stated it isn't working.

I have 3 accounts however Iwould receive mail in accounts 2 and 3 and when I replied the replied from shows accounts 2 and 3 but when it was sent it was sent form account 1...

I went into the smtp setting for accounts 2 and 3 and saw that they were using account 1's smtp server.... I never changed this so I don't know how it happened

I deleted all the smtp servers from the list and added each one back - however i named each one of the (account 1 2 or 3) and selected the right one for each mail account and also selected "only use this server" for sending emails. I have tested it out and it works

Sorry, roddlesnyc,

but this bug has nothing to do with smtp servers.

Me.com mail aliases (you can have up to 5 different aliases pointing to the same @me.com address) all use the same smtp server (and if you use iCloud this smtp server it's just called… iCloud, you don't even see the address).

Before Mountain Lion when I replied to a mail sent to alias1@me.com my reply was sent from "alias1@me.com"; when I replied to a mail sent to alias2@me.com my reply was sent from "alias2@me.com", and so on, even if my "alias1@me.com" mail was stored in a folder called "1" and my "alias2@me.com" mail in a folder called "2".

In Mountain Lion there is no problem if the mails are left in their own mailbox, but if they are moved to a different folder, the address that shows up in the "from" field is always the main one. This means that I've already sent a few mails from an address I didn't want to disclose (that's the point of having mail aliases, so that you can use an address for shopping, and another one for online forums, and so on, without revealing your main address).

Now I have to pay attention every time I send a reply, and manually change the "from" field to the correct one.

Amen! This is slowing me down big time. I was actually considering creating a roadblock to interrupt my ability to send a message so that I was forced to consciously confirm the account I was sending from first.

I don't care whether they call it a bug or an option or a feature. As far as I'm concerned they can leave the current option so long as the old "reply from the account that the e-mail was addressed to" option gets put back. This one's right up there with the "save-as" issue :-)

Like you I consider this a bug, and hopefully one that will soon be addressed. But were I you, I would wait a while (maybe or week or so) to Move any messages to On My Mac mailboxes, and instead rely upon Smart Mailboxes to have the same separation Rules as those used to move the messages. Since Reply from a Smart Mailbox chooses the correct From address, such mistakes will not be made.

Later you can select the messages in the Smart Mailboxs and complete the Move to an On My Mac mailbox.

Ernie

Updated to 10.8.2 - the bug remains.