Mail bug in Mountain Lion

+1 - having the same problem. Replying to any email from any of my accounts always uses the primary account. (A bit of an issue for those of us who like/need to, for example, keep work and personal accounts separate.)

I too am having this problem but let me add some specificity:

When in the universal mailbox, if I had selected an email, and then created a new email, it would be set up to be from whatever email account of the email I'd highlighted.

Now when it the Universal Mailbox, any new email seems to default to my .Me account.

(If I'm actually in the mailbox for a specific account, that continues to work correctly).

+1

Having same issue. I have forwarded all of my personal and business email addresses to me.com. If I initiate an email, Mail will use the account I have designated in preferences. If I am replying to an email, it defaults to me.com address regardless of what email address the email was originally sent to. Would like this to revert to Lion behavior.

waynefromvirginia beach's response made me realize what's going on.

I've been having the same problem, and now, with some experimenting, I think I know why.

Under Lion, when you replied to a message, Mail sent it from the email address that matched the To field of the original message.

Under Mountain Lion, when you reply to a message, Mail sends it from the email address of the account whose inbox the message is currently residing in (unless you've changed the settings to always send from a certain account).

In many circumstances, this is the same thing, so many users wouldn't notice a difference. But in some circumstances and for some users, this makes a huge difference and causes undesirable behavior.

For instance...

Let's say I have two email accounts: bob-work@example1.com and bob-home@example2.net. I have Mail set up with two accounts, "Work" and "Home," each checking mail from (and replying from) its respective address.

Under Lion, any messages I receive that are addressed to bob-work@example1.com will be replied to from that address, and messages that are addressed to bob-home@example2.net will be replied to from that address. Simple.

Under Mountain Lion, though, things are different. Any messages in the "Work" inbox will be replied to by bob-work@example1.comregardless of what email they were addressed to, and any messages in the "Home" inbox will be replied to by bob-home@example2.netregardless of what email they were adddressed to.

As long as each of those account inboxes is only checking its respective emails, and as long as I only reply to messages while they're in my inbox, everything works the same as in Lion.

But here's where it creates problems.

If one of my email addresses is actually an alias that forwards to another address (like if I have multiple work addresses that forward to the same account, or if I use a .Me address or other service to gather my email in the cloud before I download it), then those emails won't be in the expected inbox and therefore won't be replied to by the correct email address.

If bob-work@example.com forwards messages automatically to bob-home@example2.net, then those messages will be in my Home inbox and will be replied to by my personal email address under Mountain Lion instead of my work email address as they were under Lion. Mountain Lion doesn't seem to care who they were addressed to; it only cares which inbox they're currently residing in. If I manually (or via rules) move the messages to the correct inbox, then I can reply as expected.

Similarly, if I reply to messages from a folder rather than from my inbox, Mail no longer knows which email address to use for replying, so it just uses the one associated with the first inbox in the list (I think).

I much preferred how Lion handled these situations, and would rather that it be at least an option to switch back. In the meantime, the best workaround I can think of for people who forward their mail from one account to another is to use Mail's rules to put the emails back in the desired inbox before you reply to them. This doesn't do anything for those folks who reply from non-inbox folders, though.

Let me know if this helps!

I think that your conclusion is correct: Mail replies-from the inbox in which the e-mail resides. I also think that your solution works in some circumstances.

It won't work in mine and others', though. I have a rule that I made in Lion that moved ALL incoming mail to my iCloud account. Why? So that I can sync my e-mails over my machines. It worked and was VERY sweet. When I replied to an e-mail, it used the account to which the e-mail was addressed.

Now, not so much. Obviously. Now, I can either have ease of replying and no sync or inconvenient replying and sync.

The scary part is that we don't know if this is a new "feature" that Apple plans on keeping or a bug that they plan on fixing. If the former, then I just may go back to Lion.

Thanks for your suggestion, though.

T.

+1

Having the same problem - IT'S SO FRUSTRATING! I sadly may have to go back to Lion if this bug isn't fixed.

It completely messes up my workflow - I'm a designer and do freelance - I have more than one business and I need to make sure the email is sent from the address it was sent to. FIX IT APPLE!!!! OR GIVE US AN OPTION TO CHOOSE!!!!!!! Why did you remove something that was working for so many of us?! This is the first time I've ever really gotten angry with an update. This may seem small to some who don't need it - but to those of us with multiple email accounts that manage our emails with folders (not in the inboxes) this is HUGE!

Please, someone from Apple notice this thread, respond, and help us.

I noticed that if I used the "reply" button above the messages, right next to the window that shows the mailboxes, that the reply address is the same as it should be for responding to emails. If I click on "reply" over the actual email message, I get the "default" email address and not the one that the emai was written to. Kind of annoying, but this would be a work around until the fix is made (if it happens with the rest of you).

That's interesting. Unfortunately, I was not able to replicate that here. I appreciate your suggestion, though.

T.

Same issue for me too. Very annoying! Must be a bug, no?

Same problem.

I found that "Send new messages from account of selected mailbox" option in Mail preferences works only if the message you're replying to is in a mailbox on the server.

If it's in a local folder (in the "On my Mac" section) it will alwasy reply with the first account in the preferences.

I think (hope!) it's a Mountain Lion bug.

I figured it out! I was having the same issue too. I have three email accounts "matt@me.com", "fred@me.com", and "joe@text.com" (whatever...) Anyway, I use "matt" account all the time, the other two, "fred" and "joe" are seldom used. In Mail preferences, it doesn't matter...ignore that. I have all three inboxes under one "Inbox" on the left pane...right? THAT'S the order that matters. Drag 'n drop the mailboxes within the master "Inbox" folder to put "matt@me.com" at the top. Now when I reply to any email, it uses "matt@me.com"...which is what I want.

Hope that helps!

Yes. That "fix" was decribed in the OP above. The problem here is a bit more complicated:

People would like to be able to reply to emails using any selected account automatically. It shouldn't matter in which order one's accounts are listed. The sender address on email replies should automatically be the same as the account to which the reply was originally sent.

I can confirm the workaround suggested above. Namely, create a rule that moves the mails you have forwarded to me.com back to the Inbox of the email address the mail was originally sent to. I have also set the rule to create different colored backgrounds for each of the email addresses as a visual cue for me about which account I should be responding from. A little clunky, but serviceable and essentially invisible to me once the rule is set up.

The only downside to this strategy, for me, is that I forward all of my email to my me.com address, and my me.com account is set up as an IMAP account. All of my other email accounts are set up as POP acounts in Mail, and I have programmed the servers for these email accounts to delete the messages once they are forwarded to my me.com address.

The challenge now is that emails that I move out of my me.com Inbox into the originating email inbox will no longer show up on my iPhone or iPad, because they now reside on my computer's hard drive. Sigh.

The workaround for this is to respond to my emails quickly . . . and to move all of my Inbox emails to me.com's Inbox before I am going to be away from my computer, and then to run the rule again when I get home. How ugly is this?

Bottom line: I have a clunky workaround for now. Was sure simpler under Lion. I am hoping that Apple views this as a bug. I am afraid, though, that it may be a "feature," since the behavior is now more akin to how the iPhone and iPad work. Other than a unified Inbox, you can only access the folders associated with a particular email account when you are in that account. If I want to see my Gmail folders, I have to be in that account on the iPhone. I can't see them if I am in my me.com account. I suspect that this logic is what may have driven the change in Mail. I hope I am wrong and a fix is coming, but . . .

I think the real bottom line is that this isn't an issue for most people (including me), so it isn't a bug. Bugs are by definition reproducible, and this isn't. That's why I think there's a piece missing from this puzzle.