Mail bug in Mountain Lion

I think you set the default up in "Apple Mail Preferences" >>>> "Composing" tab and about half way done is "Send new messages from"______________ pull down menu...

does that solve the problem or did I misunderstand...

Jim

Doesn't solve the problem. The issue is that as soon as you use a rule or a filter to move incoming mail to a folder other than in the inbox, it breaks something in Mail so that if you reply to the moved email it replies from a default email, not the email the sender replied to.

As has been mentioned many times, it's a "bug" in Mail.

There is nothing the end user can do to fix it!

Allow me to reiterate and hopefully do a better job this time, describing the bug.

I was in error a little bit the first time I described it, because I had some false assumptions.

Here is the situation as I see it in 10.8.2:

1. I have 13 active email address accounts set up in my Mail.app. Don't ask; it has to do with over a decade of working at various companies, doing different projects, and accumulating different groups of people I correspond with and who are used to corresponding with one of my email addresses. In this day and age of spam filters etc, keeping the email address consistent with folks I've been yakking with for years, or with mailing lists I've been on for years, has its advantages and conveniences...

2. I mistakenly stated, here and to Apple Support, that when composing a new message, the From address was not defaulting to the current inbox. Mistaken, because I don't use the inboxes most of the time. I have tons of mailboxes (dumb ones, not smart ones) and run a gazillion rules and inbound mail to all those addresses gets sent various mailboxes I've created. So for account brian@abcd.com, for instance, it goes to an "abcd" mailbox; for brian@efgh.com, it goes to the "efgh" box I've created, and so on. It works for me.

3. It turns out that Mail.app DOES DO, at least for me, the right thing, IF you first click on, say, abcd.com's inbox sub-folder inside "Inbox", and you create a new message. From: is set to abcd.com. Great. But I don't care. I never do that. My inboxes are essentially empty.

4. HERE IS THE BUG: in prior MacOS X's, no matter WHAT email you were reading, if you hit 'Reply', the email composer window for your reply popped up and the From was properly set to the right thing, based on the address the sender sent to. So if someone emailed me at brian@efgh.com, when I hit 'Reply', it would say From: brian@efgh.com, not brian@abcd.com or something else. With 10.8.2, IT NO LONGER DOES THIS. Whatever the very first account is in my alphabetical list of accounts, is ALWAYS the default From address when I reply. This creates HUGE hassles and productivity problems on my end, and confusion and potentially spamfilttered issues on my recipients' end.

HERE IS THE BUG: in prior MacOS X's, no matter WHAT email you were reading, if you hit 'Reply', the email composer window for your reply popped up and the From was properly set to the right thing, based on the address the sender sent to.

Exactly. It has nothing to do with mailboxes or what you selected as your default address for "new messasges".

When you hit reply, Mail should send it from the address the email was sent to. Period.

I'm curious if restoring a previous version of Mail's "Accounts.plist" file would help? This property list contains the available accounts for use when replying or composing messages, and its possible that an odd setting or error in it could result in Mail defaulting to one or only a few out of the available accounts.

This file is in the username/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/ folder, and can be restored to a previous version using Time Machine (you can also use Time Machine to revert to the most recent version if this does not work).

HERE IS THE BUG: in prior MacOS X's, no matter WHAT email you were reading, if you hit 'Reply', the email composer window for your reply popped up and the From was properly set to the right thing, based on the address the sender sent to.

Exactly. It has nothing to do with mailboxes or what you selected as your default address for "new messasges".

When you hit reply, Mail should send it from the address the email was sent to. Period.

Bingo.

For what it's worth, I am having same problem only on my laptop (MacBook Pro), not on my desktop (iMac 2007).

I was able to alleviate it temporarily by deleting the iCloud account and rebuilding it, but it reverted within a few days.

Another difference with this version is the inability to change the order that accounts appear in Mail, and I wonder if the problem is that it defaults into the top account, which is always iCloud.

I await an Apple fix and need to remember to change the account each time I reply to work email.

LydiaMann, your comment that you are not having this problem on your desktop has me skeptical. You're using Mountain Lion? You're making sure you're replying to the message from a folder that is NOT the inbox? Nobody else has stated that it works on some machines and not others, so i have no idea why yours would be working unless you're not testing it properly. Please let us know.

I too have this issue and it has caused emails to be sent from the wrong address. So now I must be constantly diligent and no it doesn't "just work".

The behavior is very clearly a bug. It happens only when replying to emails NOT in an inbox. And it's not how Mail has behaved for many release cycles now. It basically breaks the usability of the app in concert with Rules and multiple Mailboxes, and has no good work around for those in the habit of trusting the proper From email address is already set.

It's a rather significant and hideous bug because it means routinely and inadvertenly replying to emails with the wrong From account. It's actually quite appalling it hasn't been fixed in three months still, and is now worthy of upgrading back to 10.7, which had the proper behavior.

I have the exact same issue as many have described here.

There is a work-around that may be helpful to us in the mean time.

Check out this link from David Sparks at MacSparky

http://macsparky.com/2012/8/apple-mail-send-from-trick

Apple Mail Send-From Trick

This was created specifically to be able to change the 'reply from addi' reguardless of the email box the message resides in when replying

Cheers

aquabond wrote:

I have the exact same issue as many have described here.

There is a work-around that may be helpful to us in the mean time.

Check out this link from David Sparks at MacSparky

http://macsparky.com/2012/8/apple-mail-send-from-trick

Apple Mail Send-From Trick

This was created specifically to be able to change the 'reply from addi' reguardless of the email box the message resides in when replying

Cheers

There are numerous attempts at resolving this by using keyboard shortcuts to invoke processes to set the FROM address, whether they be what "macsparky" suggests or full-blown AppleScript code... none work 100% reliably, or require manual intervention... the only way to fix this is to get Apple off their collective arses and fix their code that broke with the introduction of Mail.app for Mountain Lion.

As I stated:

"may be helpful to us in the mean time"

I too, will be happy to see it fixed . . . But in the mean time this is what I am doing.

More Cheers

If 10.8.3 doesn't fix it, then I don't think we are ever going to see a fix 😟

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/31/apple-preparing-first-beta-of-os-x-108 3

Let's hope for the best!!