Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
I notice that Postbox seems to work well with multiple identities. In addition, you can set a different name for each identity, such as:
John Smith for john.smith@somedomain.com
Support for support@somedomain.com
Is there a way to do that in Apple Mail? If not, I think I'll switch to Postbox. It's on sale for $6.95 for a short time.
Thanks,
doug
iMac, OS X Mountain Lion, iMac (21.5-inch Late 2009, 12 GB)
Good question. Certainly for very important accounts, like support, a separate account is warranted. But sometimes a single account with multiple identities is useful
For example, the difference between "info" and "sales" might be similar enough to not warrant a separate account.
Also a lot of accounts makes the list of accounts just long. I already have 8.
doug
I believe that should be the way to optimize it...
i.e. a customer sends an e-mail to info@....com with sales inquiry, the reply is from sales@...com, if e-mail sent is related to support then reply is from support@....com etc.
sales@ and support@ are separate accounts as well as info@...com. However, info@...com has several aliases: web@...com, admin@...com, requests@...com, or different product names/groups at the beginning dap@somedomain.com for domestic appliances, ce@somedomain.com for consumer electronics etc...
As well, if you publish your e-mail addresses on web, it is good practice to publish aliases instead of real e-mail addresses.
i.e. you setup an account for customer support cs@somedomain.com then create an alias for it support@somedomain.com which is to be published on web. If one day you find that too much spam is coming to this address you remove this alias and create a new one i.e. customer.support@somedomain.com and replace an old support e-mail address/alias with the new one on the web. In this case all further e-mail messages sent to support@somedomain.com are rejected by mail server because on non existent e-mail address. When you configure your e-mail client (i.e. Mail app) configure it for an alias, not the real e-mail address, so the replies are from the correct e-mail address (alias) and the real account is not disclosed.
Those are all good and reasonable suggestions. But we are still left with the issue that while in, say, Gmail I can have the name Customer Support associated with customer.support@somedomain.com and Support associated with support@somedomain.com and Domestic Appliances associated with dap@somedomain.com, I can't do that in Mail unless they are each separate accounts.
doug
it seams so...
I just played a little with Google mail and aliases.
I thought that should be possible to create an account in Mail app with alias address and send e-mail messages from it, but Mail.app/Google refused to accept my password. Then I tried to sign-in to Google www mail with an alias user name and password and Google server did not accepted it either... I could not even find how to send an e-mail message directly from Google web mail client from alias address...
It seams that it is not that easy....
Probably the quickest and the cheapiest option would be you to setup separate accounts for each e-mail you need to send messages from.
I actually have no problems sending email from within Google web mail from an alias address, including the alias's name.
And I can send email from Mail.app via the Gmail server using the alias address.
You just have to register and confirm the alias.
The only problem is that for each acount Mail.app only allows one name. So even though you can send out from the alias addresses, they all go out with the same name.
From within Google mail (or Mailplane) it works fine though - you can set a different name for each alias.
doug
Since I never reply to email messages sent to my alias e-mail addresses, it might be that I have to configure something to set it correctly.
If you go to mail app and add an accoount for an alias email, can you send it?
i.e. you have one account info@somedomain.com and its alias support@somedomain.com
and add these both email addresses are the separate accounts in Mail app. Can you send an email from an aliaced email account?
Logging in with the alias address does not seem to work, so I don't think having an extra account for an alias will work.
Of course if you control the domain you can add an extra account instead of an alias. It's wasteful though, because if you are using their free Google Apps you only get 10 email accounts. If you are using their paid Google Apps then each account costs $5/month or $50/year with a year contract. So sometimes it's better to use an alias, economically.
There is also an option for adding an address and then unchecking the "this is an alias" box, but I dont' really understand what that does, even after reading their explanation. It doesn't seem to do what it says. It seems the same to me either way.
doug
It seams I have it working (on my domain hosted at Google). What I did:
- Created an e-mail account business@somedomain.com
- Created aliases for this account support@somedomain.com, sales@somedomain.com, info@somedomain.com you may work with your existing accounts that already have aliases.
- As you told, I confirmed these aliases to be able to send email messages from. For some aliases I left "treat as an alias" checked and for some unchecked - (have not spotted a difference and the difference may only appear when few people are using this account IMHO)
- in Mac Mail application added new account business@somedomain.com and when I have it configured and working, added to the Email Addresses field support@somedomain.com, sales@somedomain.com, info@somedomain.com (separated by comma) and left the "Full Name" field blank.
The good:
Now I can send email from all the aliases created and these are received from the correct e-mail address.
The bad:
There is no easy way of getting an e-mail to appear in recipients inboxex as Customer Support <support@somedomain.com>, Sales <sales@somedomain.com>, Somedomain Info <info@somedomain.com>
all they are displayed as from plain e-mail address with no more explanatory name in front of it. A kind of work around might be to put company name, let's say Some Domain to the "Full name" field, then "Some Domain" will appear in front of all the e-mail messages sent from these aliases as well as from business@somedaomain.com
If you want to get meaningful names in front of these alias e-mail addresses, the way I have mentioned above is the solution.
In my
~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Accounts.plist file
bellow the
| <key>EmailAddresses</key> |
| <array> |
| <string>business@somedomain.com</string> |
| <string>support@somedomain</string> |
| <string>info@somedomain</string> |
| <string>sales@somedomain</string> |
| </array> |
I have added these lines:
| <key>EmailAliases</key> |
| <array> |
| <dict> |
| <key>alias</key> |
| <string>support@somedomain</string> |
| <key>name</key> |
| <string>Customer Support</string> |
| </dict> |
| <dict> |
| <key>alias</key> |
| <string>info@somedomain</string> |
| <key>name</key> |
| <string>Some Domain</string> |
| </dict> |
| <dict> |
| <key>alias</key> |
| <string>sales@somedomain</string> |
| <key>name</key> |
| <string>Sales Some Domain</string> |
| </dict> |
| </array> |
And so far it is working with no problems.
I think you may try this way and if you see some problems with Mail -- remove these lines from the plist file and go to the plan B where all these e-mails are sent either with one "Company Name" in front of e-mail address as you set in "Full name" filed of Mail app or with plain e-mail addresses.
Why to create a separate e-mail account for these aliases? If aliases are created for your your personal e-mail account (with your personal name and surname) and these modifications to plist file one day will make Mail app to fail, you should go back to plan B, and having the company name or any common name you decide to use for the aliases in front of your personal e-mail address might be not the best solution.
Yes, just having the company name is one solution. Another solution is finding a different mail client which has a proper UI for supporting multiple identities in each account. But the Mac mail client pickings are slim.
MailPlane will work fine. But it's just a small step above using Gmail itself, I think. Plus you don't have your data backed up locally. And it only works with Gmail accounts.
Postbox seemed really really nice when I tried it, but sending email was chaos. I kept having email going out under names different from what I selected! That could be disastrous!
Thunderbird was equally hard to use, and I think development on that client is not really proceeding.
And then we are back with Mail.app, which supports email aliases but just their addresses, at least in the standard UI.
doug
It is up to you, but I would give it a try to make changes to plist file. This makes Apple Mail to work the way you want and always there is a simple way back - just remove these lines and have company name as identity.
there are typo in my example. The .com part is missing in most of email addresses.
<string>support@somedomain</string> should be <string>support@somedomain.com</string>
I might try it again. But it caused my Mail.app to crash when I tried it last time. Are you also using OS X 10.8.2?
doug
Yes, I am using 10.8.2
it may crash if you made a "gramatical" mistake like forgot to close some tags etc...
Just copy all maroon color part from my example, paste to the correct palce to plist file and make changes to email addresses and identities.
| <key>EmailAliases</key> |
| <array> |
| <dict> |
| <key>alias</key> |
| <string>support@somedomain.com</string> |
| <key>name</key> |
| <string>Customer Support</string> |
| </dict> |
| <dict> |
| <key>alias</key> |
| <string>info@somedomain.com</string> |
| <key>name</key> |
| <string>Some Domain</string> |
| </dict> |
| <dict> |
| <key>alias</key> |
| <string>sales@somedomain.com</string> |
| <key>name</key> |
| <string>Sales Some Domain</string> |
| </dict> |
| </array> |
the only email addresses and the boldblue part has to be replaced and make sure you place it to the correct place (see my post above)
Additionally - VERY IMPORTANT, if you use textedit to edit plist file to not edit it in rich text format.
Textedit > Preferences > New Document > Plain text
Additionaly VERY IMPORTANT
if you use textedit or simmilar app to make changes to plist file, make sure you are editing it in plain text format
Textedit > Preferences > New Document > plain Text
no wrap to page marked
Textedit > Format should contain "Make Rich text" entry otherwise if it says Make Plain text you are editing in rich text format, this is bad. 🙂
I was using BBEdit.
doug
Can a single Mail account have multiple outgoing people names?
