Mail sender chosen unpredictably

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Level 1

9 points

Mail sender chosen unpredictably

MacOS Mail seems to choose the sender unpredictably. My wife and I have one address each on our ISPs email service. Both addresses appear in our Mail window. This morning I sent a message that ended up going from my wife's address. The ? in the Composing window in Mail Preferences says that it's automatically selecting the best account based on the email address of the first recipient in the message (a Yahoo address) as well as the currently selected mailbox (mine) and message (one of mine). How could it possibly select my wife's address?

Is there a solution to this? My wife has the same thing happen–messages going out under my address–nearly every day, and it's happening too often for me.

MacOS 10.13.3

iPad 2, iOS 8.2

Posted on Mar 5, 2018 2:18 PM

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Answer 1

tygb

Level 9

64,582 points

Mar 6, 2018 9:24 AM in response to dcj7

In mail preferences > composing section .

Send new messages from

The email address to use when you send messages.

If you use several email accounts, you can have Mail automatically select the best address, based on the email address of the first recipient in your message, as well as the currently selected mail box and message.

An example if there are two mail address one is for gmail and other is for iCloud .

If I select google in mail side bar the gmail address will be selected in From field .

And , if I select iCloud the iCloud address will be selected .

You can manually select it as shown in the above screen shot , in your case as you wrote in the question or click on drop down arrow of and select the at the desired mail address .

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Answer 2

brenden dv

Community Specialist

Mar 6, 2018 6:54 AM in response to dcj7

Hi, dcj7.

It seems you and your wife have encountered a dilemma using the Mail application on your Mac. Sometimes they are sent from the correct address, and sometimes they're being sent from your spouse's account. I'm happy to help.

Use Mail on your Mac -- In the Mail application, select "View > Show Mailbox List". Before composing an email, make sure you've selected the correct account . You can also check the "From:" field before sending an email. If the incorrect address is showing, click the incorrect address and select the correct account from the drop-down list.

All of your mailboxes are listed in the sidebar. If the sidebar isn't visible, click the Mailboxes button in the Favorites bar, or choose View > Show Mailbox List.

Let me know how that goes.

Take care!

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Answer 3

dcj7 Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 6, 2018 10:34 AM in response to brenden dv

Thank you for your reply. I am aware of that way of choosing the sender, but why do I have to check the sender every time I send an email message? In El Capitan, which I am running on my older MacBook Pro, the Mail Preferences allow me to "Send messages from the 'Account of the selected mailbox'." How can this new, mysterious algorithm be better? For me it's just more work.

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Answer 4

Old Toad

Level 10

207,187 points

Mar 6, 2018 10:43 AM in response to dcj7

Are you and your wife sharing the same user account on your Macs? If so then each should have their own Apple ID and user account on each device you use.

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Mail sender chosen unpredictably

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