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JeffW Author

Level 1

143 points

error using multiple email addresses in IMAP account

Thanks for reading - any help, advice or direction you can offer is very much appreciated!

Here is my situation: I use a single IMAP account with several email addresses. If it's important to know, they are all set up as aliases, so I can receive mail in one single account at all of the addresses and can send email from any of the addresses through the same SMTP account.

This behaves radically differently in Mail (iPhone and iPad) under iOS 6 than it did in iOS 5, and I need the behavior I had in iOS 5.

I am seeking help in figuring out how to make iOS 6 Mail behave the way iOS 5 Mail did.

Here's how I set it up in iOS 5: I used the primary email address (also my login for the IMAP/SMTP account) to set up the account on the iPad. This all worked. Once it was set up, I went back to settings and added the other email addresses as a comma-separated list in the "email" field after the primary one.

Then, when I went to compose a message (from mail, or from any other app), the default "from" address was the primary e-mail address (the first one listed), and it allowed me to tap on the "from" field and select a different one.

This changed in iOS 6, like this:

I set up the account the same way as above. With just the primary e-mail address it was fine. But when I added the other addresses and saved it, it seemed to choose one address at random from the list as primary (not the first one, not the last one, not the one first or last alphabetically, just one in particular - and the same one each time I tried this). Then when I compose mail, it defaults to that alternate email as the "from".

So:

I need to have it default to the primary email address as the "from," I need to have all the alternate emails available to me to choose from, and I need to have it all set up as one account. I have tried to set up a second account on the iPad with all the alternate email addresses, but since the IMAP and SMTP logins are the same, the iPad won't let me.

Any ideas, suggestions, direction, solutions, etc. are very much appreciated!

Details: iPad 2nd gen. WiFi+3G, iOS 6

iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G, iOS 5.1, iOS 6

Posted on Sep 21, 2012 1:59 PM

Best reply

Brian Pratt

Level 1

15 points

Posted on Sep 24, 2012 7:21 AM

I think this is a bug, and I've reported it as such. More reports usually equals faster service: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

For now, I've come up with the following work-around:

1. Leave your multi-account as-is set up on your iPhone, but remove your preferred default e-mail address from the list

2. Set up a new e-mail account with IMAP access (i.e. Gmail or whatever)

3. Create a new IMAP e-mail account on your iPhone/iPad with the details of this new account for the IMAP (receive) settings, but with your original e-mail account's SMTP (send) settings. Also, set the "Email" field in the account setup to be your preferred default e-mail address.

4. Set this new mail account as the default in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars

Now, when you create a new message, you should see that your default "from" address is correct - since it is the only choice for the new mail account you set up in iOS. As long as the SMTP settings are correct, it doesn't matter that your IMAP settings don't match.

You should still be able to select any other "from" address as well, which will use your original multi-account settings, which are also correct.

All of your received mail will come in through your original multi-account inbox, and your new account's inbox will likely stay empty.

It seems like I'm forgetting a step here, but this should give you the right idea for a workaround if it isn't exactly right. Feel free to add corrections if you find them.

View in context

46 replies

Nov 6, 2012 1:10 PM in response to jgilber0

Interesting. I am still given a choice to pick from multiple addresses. It's just that defaults continue not to work.

Note that since upgrading to 6.0.1, I have not edited any addresses in Settings. Perhaps if I were to alter this list in 6.0.1, the choices would disappear as you are seeing. I don't really want to risk that at the moment, so I am reluctant to test.

jgilber0

Level 1

4 points

Nov 6, 2012 2:33 PM in response to Rusty Ross

I updated to IOS 6.0.1 and all of my Gmail setups disintegrated. I had to remove and reinstall the IMAP and Exchange accounts. After doing that, the new Exchange Gmail account would not permit multiple e-mail addresses.

For now, I'm using the Gmail app itself for most of my mail, except for messages that contain calendar item attachments. What a pain...

Nov 14, 2012 11:38 AM in response to JeffW

Just chiming in that I have your exact same problem on my iPhone 5. (In my case, it's a POP account.)

rdlomas

Level 1

0 points

Nov 26, 2012 6:26 AM in response to JeffW

What finally solved this for me was making the email address I wanted as default completely in all caps.

E.g. JOHN@HOME.COM

I'm on iOS6 on iPad Mini.

djwrek

Level 1

0 points

Nov 27, 2012 11:12 PM in response to JeffW

I finally fixed it! I tried all the methods everyone suggested but it did not work for me. There was always a bug. What I did was capitalize all the letters of the email address (such as the person above suggested), I want defaulted including GMAIL.COM and added it twice. So if I had 3 different emails set up, and I wanted my gmail to default instead of my school or business email, I would copy and paste the gmail one on there twice. I hope this works for others.

I'm on iOS6 on iPad 3rd generation.

Nov 27, 2012 11:19 PM in response to djwrek

Nope--didn't work for me: not capitalizing, and not enterting the desired email twice in the list.

It seems to be near-random: what works for one person doesn't work for another. It's just broken.

Dec 16, 2012 6:46 AM in response to Morgan Adams1

Just wanted to add my name to the increasing list of people who are disappointed that Apple hasn't fixed this yet.

I tried everything suggested. No help. I even deleted the "ios selected" default address on my mac and iphone 5 (and even deleted it in contacts).

Unbelievably, my iphone 5 is still sending mail from an account that I no longer have. (the email now shows up as an unknown address Junk Mail on my MacBook Pro)

Dec 18, 2012 6:36 PM in response to JeffW

Status Update: Just installed ios 6.02 update (released today) and it did not help. I am still sending iphone mail from an account that no longer exists on my phone. Go figure.

Dec 18, 2012 6:38 PM in response to VeniceGary

6.0.2 is clearly a limited build to patch a Wifi bug on certain iOS devices. My hope is that this will be addressed in 6.1.

Rusty

Jan 3, 2013 3:16 PM in response to Rusty Ross

Amazing... this is a problem that puts a serious limitation on the usage of the Mail app... and the original issue was posted in September 2012... how long does it take to fix this?

I've installed the Gmail App from Google, and it seems to work fine 'out of the box'... no tricks required to re-use your Gmail multiple email address setup...

I am sure there are some drawbacks to running with this setup though... I'm only two days into using my first iPhone so if anyone can point out what those drawbacks might be I'd really appreciate it...

Anders

djwrek

Level 1

0 points

Jan 4, 2013 11:21 AM in response to andersvinther

There's no real drawbacks to using the gmail app, but I feel the mail app is a better experience to read and send emails on the iPad and iPhone. This bug needs to get fixed but for now I've managed to get around it with my earlier post. I suggest trying different things recommended in this thread to fix it.

Jan 28, 2013 11:14 AM in response to Rusty Ross

This issue has not been fixed in 6.1, it seems.

Feb 4, 2013 8:36 PM in response to JeffW

I'm also having this problem, and am at least glad to hear that I'm not the only one. So far none of the workarounds (quotation marks, capitalization, extra addresses, etc.) have solved the problem. I'm using an iPad 2 with 6.1 (10B141).

Feb 9, 2013 10:59 AM in response to JeffW

I had same issue. I fixed it on my Iphone 4 system 6.0.1. But I'm also thinking that the fixes that work on one divice don't work on another.

My Fix:

All email addresses followed by a comma and a space.

First email address starts with a cap. Second email address is the same but without a cap. The third one is a different email address. Forth email address is the same as the first without a cap on the firs letter. The default shows up as the first one on the list, the one with the cap. Random but it is working for me for now.

prky

Level 1

5 points

May 22, 2013 1:41 AM in response to Robinskyapple

I found putting my default address in quotes, capitalising it, repeating it, etc didn't work.

I eventually found a way which did, maybe it will for you too.

After a lot of frustration, I finally got mine to work as follows:

1) Create a note with all the email address you want to use, comma separated, to allow cutting and pasting it into the mail settings, eg:

default@domain, email1@domain, email2@domain, email3@domain, email4@domain, email5@domain

2) Repeat your desired default address every second entry, eg:

default@domain, email1@domain, default@domain, email2@domain, default@domain, email3@domain, default@domain, email4@domain, default@domain, email5@domain, default@domain

3) Paste in the list of email addresses into your mail settings as your Email address.

4) See what default address it gives you. If it gives you default@domain, goto optional step 7.

5) If it gives you a different address, say email4@domain, edit your note to put quotes around it, eg:

default@domain, email1@domain, default@domain, email2@domain, default@domain, email3@domain, default@domain, "email4@domain", default@domain, email5@domain, default@domain

Now cut and paste the edited list into mail settings, replacing what you had.

6) It should now give you a different address. If it's not the one you want, repeat step 5 for each unwanted address it gives you, until it gives you the one you want. Goto optional step 7.

7) Optional step - start deleting the extra default@domain addresses, one at a time. If it breaks the address you want to be default, put it back try the next one.

Eventually you'll hopefully get a list with the least number of duplicates, with the default address you want.

As far as I can tell, a code change in IOS6 has resulted in the list of email addresses being put into whatever data structure being used without maintaining the listed order, whereas IOS5 did maintain the listed order.

prk.

error using multiple email addresses in IMAP account