Compartmentalized brain, compartmentalized inbox.

September 1, 2012 11:08 AM

I have multiple email addresses associated with my gmail account. Can I make one of them show up as the default in an original email's "from" field based on the email address or domain I'm writing to?

I finally set up my work email to automatically forward to my gmail account, woohoo. I also have it so that every work message I respond to will come from my work address. But it there a way to do this when composing a brand new message?

Thanks!

posted by jessca84 to computers & internet (9 answers total)

I believe you can: Settings > Accounts and Import > Send mail as: should list the addresses you've associated with the current account, and you can set one as default.
posted by kilo hertz at 11:24 AM on September 1, 2012

However, in some cases, even with this default setting, the header will still show "From Personalgmail on behalf of workdefault" due to the way recipient's servers and software might be set up. In which case, you may wish to ensure your root gmail login still reflects your propername rather than my problem ;0 which is "weirdassname" on behalf of "professionalInfini".

Set it up this way and check with a few friends - one a gmail address and at least a couple of others who are on work addresses *not* using Google for their office mail serving
posted by infini at 11:28 AM on September 1, 2012

Kilo, I want to know if it's possible to make the default change depending on the address/domain I'm emailing.
posted by jessca84 at 11:40 AM on September 1, 2012

I don't think you can have the 'from' field change automatically after filling in the 'to' field on a new message.

But you can set the default like they said above, and also you can choose which 'from' address to use on all new mail using the drop-down menu.
posted by carsonb at 11:40 AM on September 1, 2012

Go to: Settings > Accounts and Import > Send Mail As

If you scroll past your list of email addresses, there should be a setting for "When replying to a message" where you can select a radio button for either "Reply from the same address the message was sent to" or "Always reply from default address." Select the first one, and anyone who sends an email to your work address will, by default, reply from that address.
posted by decathecting at 11:51 AM on September 1, 2012

Whoops, sorry, I didn't read carefully. You've already done that. No, I don't think there's a way to create this setting for new messages you're not creating in reply to anything.
posted by decathecting at 11:52 AM on September 1, 2012

This sounds like something a User Script could accomplish without too much effort.
posted by mmascolino at 2:19 PM on September 1, 2012

Uh oh, suddenly I'm in over my head. mmascolino: What is a user script, and how can I get it to do this?
posted by jessca84 at 9:23 PM on September 1, 2012

Oh sorry jessca84, for not being more specific about User Scripts. More detail is in the link but basically it involves adding a bit of custom JavaScript to a web page to make it do something that the originally creators didn't imagine.
posted by mmascolino at 3:06 PM on September 2, 2012