Save me from myself, Mail.app
October 18, 2010 6:57 PM

I am a Mail.app user with a personal account and a work account. I would like to stop accidentally composing messages for my friends using my work account. Can you please help?

The essential problem I'm trying to solve is that I don't want copies of my outgoing mail to be stored on my personal account or work account incorrectly. But I'd also like the email to stop hitting each server if possible.

I realize that mail.app will respond to messages using the account to which they were sent, but I wish to compose new messages only with a specific outgoing account. I can program and I'm willing to solve this with applescript or the like if I knew it was possible. Right now I have smart folder set up that checks for certain messages in one account or the other and then I manually move them. Any ideas? Thanks for your help.
posted by Tristram Shandy, Gentleman to Computers & Internet (7 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
In the "Composing" tab of Preferences in Mail, you can select the account you want to compose new messages.
posted by teedee2000 at 7:05 PM on October 18, 2010


Right, teedee2000. I would like the account selected for me automatically based on the recipient of the mail I am composing.
posted by Tristram Shandy, Gentleman at 7:07 PM on October 18, 2010


Have you considered using a different mail client for one of the accounts? If they're IMAP accounts, it's trivial to switch.
posted by scottreynen at 9:25 PM on October 18, 2010


Yes, I know that setting. But if I'm reading a message in my work account, and then I start a new message for a friend, it will come from my work account. I have to highlight my personal account before starting the new message.
posted by Tristram Shandy, Gentleman at 6:53 AM on October 19, 2010


I was just going by your statement "I wish to compose new messages only with a specific outgoing account." (One of the dropdown choices is to reply always with a specific account.) If it isn't working, as you seem to be saying in your most recent reply, then i would file a bug report with Apple.
posted by teedee2000 at 7:59 AM on October 19, 2010


The OPs original question appears to be phrased poorly, but his first comment clarifies what he really wants to happen.

And frankly that functionality is something that I'd be very keen to have as well. It would be great to have the From account automatically determined by addressee, with mail.app defaulting to a nominated account if the addressee was not previously linked to a particular account.

As obvious as it is how to select the From account, in practice I must regularly skip over the dropdown and send from the 'wrong account. I only discover this later, when an incoming email is addressed to an account that ideally the writer should have no knowledge of it's existence (either from a friend to my work account, or from a client to my personal account).
posted by puffmoike at 8:44 AM on October 19, 2010


Yes, exactly, puffmoike. Thank you for phrasing my question more better. (I still don't know how to solve it.)
posted by Tristram Shandy, Gentleman at 10:44 AM on October 19, 2010


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