Can I change my Mac.com reply-to address?

[figz]

I have the email from my primary email address (NOT mac.com) forwarding to my mac.com account. When I compose messages in Mail, the message reply-to is defaulting to the email address stored in the Mac.com account settings. I want the address to be my primary address, but the email address field is greyed out. Is there any way for me to change it?

[mclbruce]

I think you can do this.

Set up a new account with your dot mac info, but make one change. Set up a new account in Mail: Preferences: Accounts: Add Account. For account type, use POP or IMAP instead of .Mac. Fill in the appropriate information as needed. Verify it is working. You should be able to put whatever you want for the email address.

After all of that you can just delete your first account in Mail.app. Note that there are major differences in how POP and IMAP accounts work, and .Mac can be used either way. I belive that if you choose account type .Mac then Mail is actually setting up IMAP.

[figz]

I guess my only question is.....are there any differences between an IMAP account and a .Mac account? What, if any, are they?

[mclbruce]

Simply a guess, but I don't think there are any differences. It wouldn't be worth Apple's trouble to add another account type on the .Mac servers. It is worth a little extra coding in Mail.app to make IMAP setup a little bit more convenient to .Mac users.

[yellow]

Originally posted by figz
I guess my only question is.....are there any differences between an IMAP account and a .Mac account? What, if any, are they? The mail servers at .Mac support both IMAP and POP.

[emory]

i think the "reply-to" just gets set to whatever email address the message is sent from. if you have multiple accounts, you can select the outgoing account address (and thus the reply-to address) from the "accounts" dropdown menu when you compose a new mail. so your best bet might be to set mail up for accessing both servers, rather than forwarding from one to the other.

unfortunatly, these are the only options you have for specifying your "reply-to" address by default in mail.app. (perhaps if more people would send feedback requesting a "reply-to" field to:http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/...)

for the time being, however, (as mentioned in a few previous hints) there is a great script posted by cricket at http://homepage.mac.com/cricket that will let you specify a reply-to address in mail (works fine with both jaguar and panther). the only real limitation is that you can only specify one "reply-to" that is applied to all acounts.

ps - as for the imap question, imap is a mail protocol (supported by most mail servers nowadays). "dot-mac" is not really an "account type" in the sense of imap or pop, but is there to just to simplify setting you up with the specific mail server used for a dot-mac email account (mail.mac.com). someone please correct me if im wrong here.

[RJP91]

Thanks for the link, Emory. I'll give Cricket's script a try. I also took your advise and sent a request to Apple.

Frankly, I was quite surprised to discover that you could not set a reply-to as this isn't exactly a new feature of email.

Thanks again for the pointer...

Bob

[emory]

hi bob,

if youre using the latest version of mail, the 'reply-to' header is now supported.

while you are composing a new message just check 'reply-to header' in the 'view' menu. you just need to do it once and the field will then be added to all future messages.

if you leave it blank, it will default to the 'from' address (i think).

emory

[zoglet]

Hi Guys

I've been haunted ny this same problem, relieved to find answer but it now seems that Cricket's script is gone, the link redirects to his photo gallery.

Can anyone make it available? I've tried to get a solution from Apple for months and they've been singularly unhelpful, saying it's not possible.

Any help would be much appreciated, I'm trying to send professional emails and the fact that I have to watch and amend each mail to avoid sending out my personal email address is hugely frustrating. I've come close to trying different mail apps

Thanks a million in advance

[emory]

Hi Guys

I've been haunted ny this same problem, relieved to find answer but it now seems that Cricket's script is gone, the link redirects to his photo gallery.

Can anyone make it available? I've tried to get a solution from Apple for months and they've been singularly unhelpful, saying it's not possible.

Any help would be much appreciated, I'm trying to send professional emails and the fact that I have to watch and amend each mail to avoid sending out my personal email address is hugely frustrating. I've come close to trying different mail apps

Thanks a million in advance

hi zoglet,

as mentioned above, if youre using the latest version of mail, the 'reply-to' header is now supported.

while you are composing a new message just check 'reply-to header' in the 'view' menu. you just need to do it once and the field will then be added to all future messages.

if you leave it blank, it will default to the 'from' address.

emory

ps - not sure what you mean by "professional" emails, but if you need replies to be sent to a certain address, try creating a new account for that address and use it to send the emails. if you were to send them from your "personal" account, you couldnt really avoid sending out your personal address regardless of the 'reply-to' header (since your personal address would already be in the 'from' field).

[zoglet]

Hi emory, thanks for the tip, I have that already but it still requires me to fill in the reply to field every time.

My current mail account is through .mac which I picked up when I got the G4.

I also have a number of aliases in .mac, which I can mail from. These are more official sounding and therefore appropriate for professional mails. ie I'm sending out resumés and similar from my john.doe@mac.com alias rather than bignose@mac.com if you get my drift.

I can currently send a mail from the preffered alias, but if I then get a response to that mail, when I reply, mail automatically uses the bignose@mac.com account as the "account sent from" address rather than the one originally used. Even though you can set this option in the preferences dialog, it applies to freshly composed messages but reverts to the .mac name when you reply to messages, which seems like poor implementation to me.

I hope you follow that.

When I originally got the mac it was for personal use, now it's almost exclusively for business and job hunting. Even though the reply to field is there, I'd much rather have mail deafault my 'sending from' account to the more professional sounding alias than the personal one. It's easy when you're on a roll to forget to change this field and although .mac themselves weren't helpful.

Basically, I'm after a solution that automatically changes the account I'm sending mail from to one of my named aliases by default.

I got the idea that this script discussed above would solve the problem.

Any thoughts?

Thanks again

[emory]

I can currently send a mail from the preffered alias, but if I then get a response to that mail, when I reply, mail automatically uses the bignose@mac.com account as the "account sent from" address rather than the one originally used. Even though you can set this option in the preferences dialog, it applies to freshly composed messages but reverts to the .mac name when you reply to messages, which seems like poor implementation to me.

I hope you follow that.

Basically, I'm after a solution that automatically changes the account I'm sending mail from to one of my named aliases by default.

I got the idea that this script discussed above would solve the problem.

Any thoughts?

Thanks again

ok, i get it. youre right, crickets script did do that i think, but it wouldnt do you much good since it was written for the old (panther) version of mail.

i dont think theres any 'official' way to do that, but heres one thing you might try:

first, create a new account with a bunk incoming server and use your alias@mac.com as the email address. set the outgoing server to be smtp.mac.com (using your mac.com username/password). now you will be able to send mail from this account, but not receive it.

the fact that you have an account with this address should make mail use it by default when replying to email sent to the alias, i think. however, if you still have problems, you can add a rule in mail preferences to move any incoming emails with a TO address of alias@mac.com from your mac inbox into the inbox of your newly created account. this would let you separate the emails into two different inboxes, but note that those sent to the alias will be stored only locally once they are moved to your new account, since there wont be an actual incoming server.

hope that helps ... and remember to send feedback to apple (http://www.apple.com/feedback/mac.html) if you think this feature should be included in the next version of mail.

-emory

[zoglet]

Thanks emory, you're right. This method works.

I was hoping that the script was still available as I have a number of domains that all forward to the mac account and for these, the "unwanted" account name is still used when replying unless I create a separate account for each mail address at each domain which then starts to get silly.

At least I have one official address I can use, thanks again.

I've already spoken to Mac and left feedback, let's hope they'll add the option for a global default soon, even better a condition based "sent from/reply to" feature.

Perhaps time for another feedback form.

;)