Can I have my e-mail forwarded and then reply from the original To address?

September 2, 2005 12:36 AM

I recently started forwarding my e-mail from my university account to GMail. I read it in Thunderbird and when I reply, it replies from my GMail account, since that's the one it was most recently sent to. Can I make the reply come from my school account by default?

I have all the e-mails sorted by their original To address, so even though it all comes through GMail, I still treat them as separate accounts. Sometimes, I would prefer to reply as [e-mail] instead of [e-mail]; especially on e-mails where I Reply All, it wants to send it to [e-mail] because it thinks that's a different person. I set up a separate, outgoing-only account (which is my default for new mails) but I have to manually select it each time on replies; sometimes I forget and people get confused about where to reply back. I can't just change the outgoing address on my GMail account because sometimes I want to send/reply from that address instead. Can I make TBird (or GMail) reply "from" the original "to" address automatically?

posted by SuperNova to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Yes, I believe so, though I haven't tried it through Thunderbird. Within Gmail...

Settings > Accounts > Send mail as...

I might also be worthwhile to adjust your Reply-To address.
posted by bwilms at 2:46 AM on September 2, 2005

I think that this is actually a limitation of GMail itself, perhaps to prevent e-mail spoofing.

I used to do similar, where multiple different addresses were collated at my ISP mailbox. I could reply with different e-mail client accounts where the e-mail address is set to the original address (i.e. not my ISP address)... which is what it sounds like you're trying to do.

When I moved to GMail, I discovered (to my horror!) that this method no longer works; no matter what e-mail address I use in the client account settings, it is always replaced by my GMail address upon receipt.
posted by Chunder at 2:47 AM on September 2, 2005

Set your from and your reply-to addresses in Gmail itself to your school address. It should appear to outsiders that you're using your campus email and they shouldn't see your gmail account at all.
posted by mathowie at 3:26 AM on September 2, 2005

I think that this is actually a limitation of GMail itself, perhaps to prevent e-mail spoofing.

This used to be the case, but as mathowie points out, this is now possible in Gmail. Just a pointer to those that, like me, haven't checked their Gmail settings for a while.
posted by nthdegx at 4:34 AM on September 2, 2005

YAYAYAY!!!!! :-)

Nice one guys - and also to SuperNova for thinking to ask this, as I'd have carried on forever without going near the GMail setting... doh!
posted by Chunder at 5:38 AM on September 2, 2005

Yeah, thanks, this is really useful.
posted by johngoren at 11:17 AM on September 2, 2005

Thanks for the suggestion, that is a useful new feature I expect to make good use of.

But what I really want is a way to make Thunderbird (or GMail) automatically reply from the address you sent it to. For instance:

--You send a message to [e-mail] which gets forwarded to GMail. I click Reply (again, either in TBird or the web) and it defaults to send you a message back from [e-mail].

--You send another message to [e-mail]. I reply to that and the message, by default, comes from [e-mail].

Is this possible? Any ideas?

Again, thanks for the helpful suggestion, but it just doesn't go as far as I want it to.
posted by SuperNova at 11:30 PM on September 2, 2005

It is worth pointing out that contrary to mathowie's comment, Gmail does display your gmail account regardless of what "send as" address you use. It is always listed in the headers, and, depending on the receipt's mail client, may even be listed as the "from" address (he talks about it towards the end of the post).
posted by marc10 at 1:42 AM on January 31, 2006