Mail bug in Mountain Lion

DPBest wrote:

How does one get Apple's attention on this - I have 10 accounts, upgraded two days ago and I'm going absolutely nuts.

I envy you, having just upgraded 2 days ago. The rest of us have suffered with this bug in for 6 months now 😟

But yeah, you should report it here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/

In fact, I'm gonna do it again myself now (several months since I did my last and only feedback).

This is disastrous and SO stupid. Please, please, Apple. You had this done well once before. Please fix it.

If this is really disastrous for you, and I am in no way doubting it, then you might consider suspend Rules or other actions to move messages into other folders. Instead, set up Smart Mailboxes to apply the same organizational overlay, and you should find that when replying to any message from such a Smart Mailbox that the correct From address will be observed.

Not saying it should not be fixed, but you don't have to lay yourself open to the misaddressing.

Ernie

Andy Milder wrote:

This is disastrous and SO stupid. Please, please, Apple. You had this done well once before. Please fix it.

Report it here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Just to be clear, this isn't only an issue for people who have rules that move messages to other mailboxes. That's just the easiest example of the bug to demonstrate.

The bug itself affects any situation where the message's current inbox can't be used to determine the desired reply address. This is true for replying to messages from outside of their inbox; it's also true for situations where a user has multiple alias addresses which all forward to the same place (outside of Mail). For example, I have an alumni email address assigned by my university which automatically forwards to my work address—but I want to reply from the address originally emailed to, which is how Mail always worked before Mountain Lion.

In a situation like that, suspending rules wouldn't make a difference. In fact, the (somewhat clumsy) solution there is to add rules to reassign messages to different inboxes. At the end of the day, the key here is that Mail used to determine the From address based on the original To address, and now, instead, it just uses the current Inbox, which fails when the message isn't in an Inbox or when different addresses forward to the same Inbox.

Not moving messages to other folders with Rules is not a solution. This is only ONE of the manifestations of the problem.

I have multiple email accounts forwared to my Gmail account so I can use their IMAP (my other accounts are POP only). I don't have any Rules set up, and I reply to messages from my Gmail inbox. Regardless of which account the sender originally sent their message to, Mail puts my Gmail address as the "from" address. There is no fix for this, as has been pointed out multiple times from multiple different posters. The only workaround involves using Applescript, and reassigning the command-R key.

There is nothing clumsy about Smart Mailboxes, where the actual message continues to reside in the receiving Inbox, and and search list that defines a Smart Mailbox provides the logical organization.

But anything that disassociates the message from the receiving Inbox can raise the bug to bite you, as ridiculus as that is!

Ernie

Smart mailboxes is how i've worked around the problem (also using flags to sort them better). I posted this many pages ago. However, I'm still waiting for the problem to be fixed. Smart mailboxes is the only valid workaround that I've found right now, but there could be others.

Andy

The design of Gmail and its SMTP is such that the SMTP, if not carefully set differently in the web access to Gmail setup, will change any From address to be that with which the SMTP is Authenticated which then is the Gmail address. This has been the case in all versions of Mail, since it is not a Mail function.

I have not tested with any special settings in Gmail to avoid that, and then compare the behavior in Mountain Lion vs earler versions of Mail.

Ernie

bla, bla bla... it's unfixable.

Ernie, I believe you're misunderstanding.

In the case of people who are moving their emails with rules, Smart Mailboxes can provide a possible solution.

HOWEVER... in the case of the situation Robert and I are describing, Smart Mailboxes don't help, because we don't want the receiving Inbox to determine the From address.

Example: My university assigned me an alias email address: student@example.edu. This address is only a forwarder; it forwards directly to my primary (work) address: workemail@example.com.

So when Mail checks my email, it receives all my email from BOTH addresses at the same time from the same server, and puts them both in the same Inbox. I don't have any rules applied to move the messages, so they both go directly to my work Inbox.

Before Mountain Lion, Mail was smart enough to realize that I want to reply to my student emails from my student account and my work emails from my work account. Now, it just assumes I want them all to reply from my work account, because they are all received at the work Inbox. That is NOT what I want.

I did not miss that entirely, but waited for further details. With a Forwarder, I am not surprised. However, I can report that alias addresses used in an iCloud account, in Mail, perform as you would want. That is the only account I have currently with true aliases set up. With another, private domain account, I have a generic address set up on a website that does not reveal any true address -- with that, even in prior versions, the true address set up will be offered as the From.

Ernie

I am also having a problem with Mail not sending emails from the correct account. I have two gmail accounts that I use in Mail, and one work account. I have different signatures in each. When I reply to a message I am sure to check which email account I am writing from, and it is obvious from my signature.

HOWEVER, when someone replies to my message it comes back to the wrong address, and when I look it appears that they received it from the wrong address as well. This happens when I send an email from my personal gmail account, and it comes back to me in my work account. I do not want people seeing my work account email, nor do I want personal emails in my work account. However, no matter how careful I am about checking which account I am in and writing from, this continues to happen.

This happens on my iPhone too. I get an email in my personal account, hit reply, and then when I get a response it goes to my work address, like that's where I sent it from. But I didn't, I just hit reply in the email - shouldn't it go from that account?????????

I have reported this to Apple, does it sound like the same problem you are all having?

This is NOT the problem being discussed here. The design of Gmail and its SMTP is such that the SMTP, if not carefully set differently in the web access to Gmail setup, will change any From address to be that with which the SMTP is Authenticated which then is the Gmail address. This has been the case in all versions of Mail, since it is not a Mail function.

You must set up the SMTP for each account, using the email address of that one account to Authenticate. With the Authentication, they become two separate SMTPs. Unless this is done, Gmail (not Apple Mail) will change the From address to be the one used to Authenticate.

Ernie

So why does it work 50% of the time???? It is not a 100% thing, which causes me to think it is a bug. It also sounds a lot like the issue YakkoW described. And on my previous computer in Mail this did not happen.

Anyways, I will try what you suggest.