Mail bug in Mountain Lion

jtibbetts wrote:

AuPhalanx's explanation is a good one, but I think the bug can be described more succinctly as:

If an email is in an Inbox and you reply to it, the correct "reply-from" address (i.e. the address it was sent to) will be selected.

If you move THE SAME EMAIL from the Inbox into a folder (via a Mail Rule or manually) and then reply to it, the default account set up for Mail will be used *not* the address it was sent to.

Yes, with one caveat: If the email is in an inbox, the correct address is selected ONLY if it is the same as the "from" address assigned to that inbox.

If the same inbox receives email from multiple addresses, the correct address isn't necessarily selected, even when the email is still in the inbox.

AuPhalanx wrote:

I hope this helps you to understand our plight.

I understand the issue well enough. The problem is that Apple Mail has no way to tell if there really is an SMTP associated with that account. In the case of fake/forwarded addresses, there would not be any associated SMTP account. When you move an email message out of the inbox, it is no longer assocated with that inbox. When you want to reply, it just picks the best server it can find.

I tried your procedure on my Lion VM. The Lion behaviour is identical to Mountain Lion. I suggest using IMAP and smart mailboxes instead. If you need to archive messages, you can do that every few months. The smart mailboxes will still find them. That way, if you need to respond to a message, it will pick the correct server. There is much less chance of responding to a message three months old and, if you do, you can pick the correct server manually. That is the way I have always used Mail and it has never been any problem.

If you want to change the default e-mail address, just drag your preferred account to the top of the list of accounts in your Inbox.

In the situation you described, where you immediately pull messages and put them into archived folders, it would be possible to track down the correct outgoing e-mail account. That would be an enhancement rather than a bug report. I admit that I did not try any POP accounts in Lion. I haven't used POP for many years. If you used IMAP accounts, you could do that on the server and everything would work as you expect.

So, I do see an area where an enhancement is possible. I don't know if it is justified because it is an enhancement which would seem to apply only to people doing immediate archives with POP accounts which are not very popular anymore. All of Apple's future efforts are going towards Exchange accounts. There, I admit it - Microsoft won the e-mail wars. You can quote me on that.

I wouldn't get my hopes up for a bug report in duplicate state. Duplicate just means someone else reported it first. It does not mean Apple is ever going to do anything about it. I just did the same regression test that an Apple engineer would do. According to my test, it works the same way in Lion. Ergo, it would be an enhancement not a bug. You probably aren't going to see that in 10.8.2. According to the rumor sites, 10.8.2 just has bug fixes and things that were supposed to be in 10.8 but didn't make it.

As with everything in Mountain Lion, I suggest you explore some of the new features that are now available and re-think how you have been doing things. There is probably a much better way to handle things now.

Hi etresoft!

Well, we will have to agree to disagree. The issue IS duplicatable: I have a machine running Lion right here that replies to e-mails correctly.

As for setting all my e-mail accounts to IMAP, it is not doable due to my web host's running processes limits.

If you want to change the default e-mail address, just drag your preferred account to the top of the list of accounts in your Inbox.

There's actually a bug with that as well. When moved, I -- and others -- have found that the accounts list doesn't remain in place after a restart.

As with everything in Mountain Lion, I suggest you explore some of the new features that are now available and re-think how you have been doing things. There is probably a much better way to handle things now.

Thanks for your suggestion, but it's a pretty dumb one; so, how about no. I'm highly confident that I've forgotten more about Mountain Lion than you've ever known. And we'll leave that at that.

T.

Ditto to AuPhalanx. This behavior does NOT exist in Lion; it is new to Mountain Lion and is not expected behavior.

I can't speak for everyone else, but I'm using POP accounts here, which is a requirement due to the specifics of my situation.

Dead on! Great description!

I agree--had no issues in Lion but in Mountain Lion the new behavior appeared.

I too am using POP accounts (along with a couple of IMAP accounts) and all exhibit the same problem in replying from messages "On My Mac"

etresoft, I'm sorry, but you're wrong on this one. The issue is reproducible, and it's worked properly in EVERY other email client I've ever used, including Mail UNTIL Mounain Lion.

It has nothing to do with SMTP servers except that setting the account (which was done properly and automatically) in Lion and earlier versions of Mail will also automatically set the SMTP server.

etresoft wrote:

The problem is that Apple Mail has no way to tell if there really is an SMTP associated with that account.

I think there is a way to tell. Click Preferences ▸ Accounts. Each account has an "Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP). If there is not really such a server, then that's my fault for mis-configuring my accounts. Sending will fail, and Mail will display an error. That's the way it should work.

Also, the issue here is not what SMTP server is used, but what name/email goes into the From: and Reply-to: fields in the header of the reply message.

etresoft wrote:

When you move an email message out of the inbox, it is no longer assocated with that inbox.

Well, it could be, if the mail message had such an attribute attached to it under the hood. Not rocket science.

Also, I agree with others that 10.7 behavior is different. Now it's true that the behavior we want back may not be expected in the beta version of some bare bones email client. So you may call it an enhancement, but it would be giving us back an enhancement that we've had for many years.

etresoft wrote:

I wouldn't get my hopes up for a bug report in duplicate state. … It does not mean Apple is ever going to do anything about it.

Sadly, you are correct.

Jerome Krinock wrote:

I think there is a way to tell. Click Preferences ▸ Accounts. Each account has an "Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP). If there is not really such a server, then that's my fault for mis-configuring my accounts. Sending will fail, and Mail will display an error. That's the way it should work.

Yes. I mentioned that in passing. That would only work for people who actually had the destination e-mail address configured as an account. It does not help with forwarding-only accounts. It is also only needed if you move your messages out of the account configured with that e-mail address. It is a possibility for improvement, but only for people using obsolete protocols or moving messages around immediately.

Also, the issue here is not what SMTP server is used, but what name/email goes into the From: and Reply-to: fields in the header of the reply message.

That is an issue too, just not as big as I thought. I didn't realize the people impacted were using POP accounts and moving messages around so much. I just thought they were relying on misconfigured e-mail servers. If the problem really is just moving messages around, then don't move them. Then it works fine.

Also, I agree with others that 10.7 behavior is different.

I tried it and it worked just like Mountain Lion.

All I can say at this point is not to waste any effort on crying "bug!" At best, the results are mixed on whether or not Lion behaved the same way. Even if we assume Snow Leopard behaved as described, Snow Leopard is old news. There are easy workarounds that will require you to use newer protocols and/or learn about new technologies such as Smart Mailboxes. It is always a good idea to revisit the way you do things and ask yourself if that really is the best way. Habits are comfortable, but learning new tricks keeps an old dog feisty.

etresoft wrote:

That is an issue too, just not as big as I thought. I didn't realize the people impacted were using POP accounts and moving messages around so much. I just thought they were relying on misconfigured e-mail servers. If the problem really is just moving messages around, then don't move them. Then it works fine.

That's not a solution, and it's kind of patronizing to suggest it as one.

I tried it and it worked just like Mountain Lion.

Lion does not work the same as Mountain Lion's Mail, no.

etre, why are you trying to "help" here? You don't understand the problem and just keep insisting there isn't one.

That's not a solution, and it's kind of patronizing to suggest it as one.

You are not going to find a solution here. We're just fellow users.

You've got to send feedback to Apple.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Posting here you're either preaching to the choir, or getting replies from people who are not bothered by this new behavior (which I think is by design, not a bug) in the Mail app.

Matt

etresoft wrote:

If the problem really is just moving messages around, then don't move them. Then it works fine.

That argument is just as invalid as when Steve tried to tell us that the iPhone had bad reception "cause we were holding it wrong" - yet, next iPhone they released, they fixed the problem "which didn't exist". Also, Apple has given us the option to create folders, and rules to place mails in folders, but you are saying we shouldn't use it?

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken - there is a bug. I've been using this workflow since Leopard. It worked there, it worked in Snow Leopard, it worked in Lion - it does NOT work in Mountain Lion. As soon as you move an e-mail away from the inbox that it was originally received it, Mountain Lion Mail lost track of which account it was sent to, even though the "recipient" (your email address) is of course still in the header (and visible), it will use a whole other reply-from email address/account when you reply to it.

The fact that this thread has gotten so long as it is, and other threads as well, suggests that there is a problem. I'm thinking you must be doing something wrong in trying to reproduce this problem. I, and other people, have been able to reproduce the bug.

Here's another thread on the same bug:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4143652?start=0&tstart=0

Idea: What if it was possible to create an AppleScript that, whenever you hit "Reply" or CMD+R, the script would check who the recipient email was, and then auto-pick that as "from" in the reply-window?

The last part I know is possible via shortcuts already, just go into System Preferences and set up a keyboard shortcut for whatever name is in the "from" drop-down box, ie. the full text there "first lastname <email@address.com>", but then you need to memorize shortcuts for your most-used "from" accounts, plus you have to both hit cmd+r to reply and then the shortcut afterwards to select "from" (instead of selecting it with the mouse) - so it would be great if this could be automated via an AppleScript that runs each time you hit CMD+R.

Kawanaut wrote:

Idea: What if it was possible to create an AppleScript that, whenever you hit "Reply" or CMD+R, the script would check who the recipient email was, and then auto-pick that as "from" in the reply-window?

There's already a script that does that. I've mapped it to cmd-opt-R via FastScripts. It's in this same thread a few pages back, I believe.

You're right - and here's a small modificaiton of the script, that doesn't require the use of FastScripts or similar, seems to work fine up until now:

Fix: Mountain Lion “Apple Mail 6.0″ problems with sender (reply-from) and mail folders/boxes