Outlook and VBA

May 13, 2013 1:47 PM

How to make Outlook automatically change the "From:" field when replying to certain emails?

I receive email sent to two email addresses; we will call them personal@ and support@. The personal@ email is my primary address, the support@ just gets forwarded to me, so all emails sent to both addresses go into one Inbox (though I sort the support@ emails into their own folder automatically).

Here is the issue. The support@ emails are from users trying to get help, and when I reply to them I don't want it come from My Name (personal@), I would like it to show up as coming from Product Support (support@). Looking around, it seems the only way to do this is with VBA, but I have been unable to find the proper resources to do it on my own (I have no VBA or really programming experience; I did find a snippet of code but was unable to find how to actually make it do anything).

I am using Outlook 2007. I would also like to have a separate signature go with these emails, but that seems fairly easily remedied, either manually or via a signature picker (though handling that automatically would be a great bonus); the changing email address/sender does not seem so easily dealt with. How would one accomplish this?

posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: You can achieve this by separating the mailboxes, rather than having the support emails forwarded to your main address. I receive emails at three different accounts in Outlook 2007, and when I reply to an email sent to one of those mailboxes, the address the email is sent to is the default in the "from" field.
posted by something something at 1:54 PM on May 13, 2013

Response by poster: Do you mean having multiple accounts set up such that when you open Outlook you are asked to choose which one you want to see and you don't see email from the other one unless you switch accounts? If so, I have done this before and it was unsatisfactory. If not, I would be interested in learning more.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 1:58 PM on May 13, 2013

No, they are all open at once and I can click around in all of them as I choose. My mailbox is at the top, my boss's follows, and then another one I use for making travel arrangements, all in a list. They are all full Outlook mailboxes, with Contacts and Calendars and so on. I'm a secretary, not an IT person, so I don't know what it takes to set something like this up, but I know it was done in a matter of minutes. Hopefully another mefite can weigh in with instructions on the setup details.
posted by something something at 2:38 PM on May 13, 2013

Can you add a from field to your emails? I don't know if this requires an exchange server, but try enabling it and sending yourself mail.

Link here
posted by Hactar at 3:00 PM on May 13, 2013

Response by poster: I solved the issue (using the information here) by following your advice, something something. This is a satisfactory solution. Thanks!
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 11:12 AM on May 14, 2013 [1 favorite]