Mail bug in Mountain Lion

Yes, this is really bad.

I think that the people not reporting the problem are those that leave everything in their inbox. People who move messages to folders manually, or whose Rules don't file all messages, have the problem sometimes. Power users like me, who have set Rules to immediately file all messages upon receipt, are being killed.

Apparently, until Mountain Lion, the original account of each message was kept as a hidden attribute, so that if the message was moved, either manually or by a rule, to a folder, the message still knew where it came from. It appears that this hidden attribute has disappeared in Mountain Lion, which breaks "Send messages from account of selected mailbox" for any message moved to a folder.

This is a bad regression, resulting in embarrassment and confusion for power users when messages are sent from the wrong account. Because power users must use rules, there is no good workaround for power users, and should be fixed as soon as possible.

I have reported it to Apple. It has Bug ID #12013442. You are all encouraged to log in to Apple's Bug Reporter,

https://bugreport.apple.com

Use your Apple ID. Then click "New Problem". They ask you to explain it in detail, but if you don't have time to do that, just paste this in:

I am piling on to Apple Bug ID #12013442. Me, too!

and then add a little bit about how it is ruining your life, etc.

Hi Jerome!

Spot on! I just submitted another bug report. I hope this is fixed. Soon!

T.

I agree with this issue too. I've got 14 mail accounts from my different websites projects. When I receive an email to one destination account, if I make a reply it should be sent from the account that received that email, and this does not happens. It uses the first mail account or default mail account. Even if you change your preferences you can select an account to be used always, but that's not the case.

This is a bug for sure.

Thanks.

Yes, Jerome nailed it. The problem is that if you use a Rule to move a message to a folder, it forgets what sender to use for that message. This is a serious regression. I reported it already using Mail's "Send Feedback". I'm a registered Apple Developer, so I'll also report it in bug reporter. (The different groups within Apple have vey different behavior responding to bug reports; some give immediate priority to bug reporter issues, and others completely ignore them.)

Here is my bug report: 12025786:

Summary:

Mail is not defaulting the sender correctly for messages that have been moved into another mailbox by a rule.

This is a serious regression from Lion.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Set up Mail with more than one account, let's call them A and B.

2. Set up a rule so that messages received on account A, are sent to a folder "ON MY MAC" called "A".

3. Set up a rule so that messages received on account B, are sent to a folder "ON MY MAC" called "B".

4. Receive messages on accounts A and B

5. Go to Mail Preferences, Composing, and set Send New Messages From: Account of selected mailbox

6. Reply to the message in mailbox A, observe the default sending account

7. Reply to the message in mailbox B, observe the default sending account

Expected Results:

The default sending account in step 6 should be A, the default sending account in step 7 should be B.

Actual Results:

The default sending account for both will be the same (either A, or B, depending on the order the account are listed someplace, although theories diverge about what place that is: possibly the preferences accounts list, but more likely the inbox list).

Regression:

In Lion and previous, messages remembered where they came from, so that they would default to the correct sender. The new behavior is extremely undesirable. In fact, I can't think of a single case where it would be preferred over the old behavior.

Notes:

This discussion thread gets at various different versions of this same problem:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4148125?start=45&tstart=0

As Jerome wrote:

"This is a bad regression, resulting in embarrassment and confusion for power users when messages are sent from the wrong account. Because power users must use rules, there is no good workaround for power users, and should be fixed as soon as possible."

Also, you will see that bug #12013442 may be a duplicate of this bug.

Thank you for the kinds words, jesmith. Although I'm registered as a developer too, I don't think that is necessary to file an official Bug Report here

https://bugreport.apple.com

I think that since they switched everything over to Apple IDs, anyone with an Apple ID can use bugreport.apple.com. I encourage everyone to do so.

It's probably worth mentioning that the actual problem this is causing me is that I can never remember what email address I used to sign up for a given mailing list, and so every time I reply to a @lists.apple.com or @googlegroups.com or whatever message, they're getting bounced because I'm using the wrong sender. If it wasn't for the nice "Send Again" feature in Mail, I'd be dead by now.

Finding the same problem here. Only I was using Outlook previously and just switched to Mail. I though it was very strange behavior indeed. I was concerned that this was the way it works. This post reassures me that this is not the norm. But I do need a fix ... quick. Back to Outlook?

Tuttle wrote:

I don't see this behavior.

I have 18 accounts in Mail, and have just gone through 12 of them, testing your issue. In all cases, my replies were addressed from the account which received the email. In no case did a reply I created show my default sender address.

Are the messages that you are replying to in your INBOX or have they been filed in a different folder? Apparently, the bug affects only mail replied to when they are filed in a different folder. If the reply is on a message still in the inbox/account folder, the reply is sent from the correct email address.

DWFaust wrote:

Tuttle wrote:

I don't see this behavior.

I have 18 accounts in Mail, and have just gone through 12 of them, testing your issue. In all cases, my replies were addressed from the account which received the email. In no case did a reply I created show my default sender address.

Are the messages that you are replying to in your INBOX or have they been filed in a different folder?

Almost all of my messages are rerouted to different folders using close to 100 rules, and my original response near the top of this topic still stands.

NB: I answered this topic in response to the OP's issue as it was initially reported:

In Mail preferences, on the Composing tab, you can still set "Send new messages from account of selected mailbox." Unfortunately, this setting seems to have no effect and all new mail is sent by default from the first account in your mail accounts list.

Mail defaults to whatever account is named in "Send new messages from [account name]" setting. (And if the account name is "account of selected mailbox," it just uses the first account listed.)

but, imo, this topic is no longer about that issue, and has evolved into a discussion about something else entirely (and which I have reason to believe is intended, though to some, unexpected, behavior in Mail.app).

Tuttle, this is very bad news that you report using rules and don't have the problem. I was hoping that it was reproducible.

As far as the topic evolving, I don't think so. The original problem reported by markmal is still what we're talking about, although at first it was not realized that Rules are a factor.

By the way, Apple has replied that the bug I reported is a duplicate, meaning that someone else reported it even before I did.

I can't think of any reason why Apple would have intended this behavior, unless maybe they want the whole world to switch from email to their new Messages app.

I can't think of any reason why Apple would have intended this behavior

You can call it "dumbing down" or the further "iOSification" of OS X, but it would seem that if a user moves a mail message from one account to another, then Mail thinks that that move means that the user actually wants that message associated with the latter account (although Mail gives the user an opportunity to change the Reply To [Sent from] address back to the original, receiving account—or any other account—in every message).

The original problem reported by markmal is still what we're talking about

Have to disagree.

markmal's complaint seems to be that no matter what account an email is moved to, the return email only shows the default account (that is, the account selected in the Composing tab of Mail Preferences) as the return address. Others are reporting that no matter what account a message is moved to, the message shows a return address of the account to which it has been moved. Those are different issues, imo.

Just fwiw, I had subscribed to this topic based on what I thought the Original Poster was describing as well. The OP had specifically mentioned the preference selection "Send new messages from account of selected mailbox" was no longer working for him. So I assumed he was indeed talking about creating *new* messages, not replies as described later.

To clarify, my situation has absolutely nothing to do with rules. I keep the majority of my emails contained within their original mailbox (they are not moved). But like the original poster, if I create a *new* email, even with the "Send new messages from account of selected mailbox" preference selected, it automatically sends the email from the first account in my mail accounts list...NOT the address of the whatever email that is currently selected in the inbox, as it always has previously up through Lion.

Mail is creating replies from the correct email address (because as mentioned, I am not using rules to move them). But like the OP seemed to originally imply in his first post, my problem is with creating *new* emails.

So seems like there may be two different, but extremely related isssues going on. I cannot report a bug, because when I tried the url given in this thread, it is apparently for developers only. If any of you developers can reproduce my issue, it would be wonderful if you could submit a bug report on our behalf! Thanks. I sure hope they come up with a fix for both of our issues. I can feel your frustrations.

Hi bug00!

Yes, in reviewing this topic, it does seem that we veered from the original problem a tad. I do think that in some way the issues are related. In any event, I think that one thing on which we can all agree is that Mail 6.0 is a wee bit buggy. And that we all hope that Apple fixes everything soon.

T.

if a user moves a mail message from one account to another, then Mail thinks that that move means that the user actually wants that message associated with the latter account

Well, no. When you create folder "ON MY MAC" there is no way to associate them with an account. Actually, if I *could* associate a folder with an account, then that would probably solve my problem, since I'd associate it with the account on which I always receive those emails.

But what's happening here is mail is putting them into a folder, which cannot be associated with an account, and therefore the replies will *always* go to the default account. That is not a feature. That is a bug.