.mac email problems

[richard plumb]

Hi

Just setting up email for myself and the wife. I have a couple of .mac email addresses, and also some from my current ISP. I also have a personal domain.

Now, if I set my personal domain to forward email to my .mac account, it turns up just fine, flagged as from '[email protected]'. But if I reply to it, the reply comes from '[email protected]'. So if anyone tries to email me using my personal domain and I reply, their reply will come back to my .mac address which I don't want.

Is there any way aroudn this?

I suppose I could forward to my ISP email instead and see if I can use my ISP smtp to send mails, but I'm surprised my .mac doesn't support it.

 

[stuart07970]

not sure if this will help but,

I have .mac and 4 alias's, so i don't have the same setup as you but,
when i reply to a mail I have a drop down menu with my e-mail address and all my alias's, I then just pick one

 

[richard plumb]

yes, that works if I'm just using the .mac one. But I wanted to start to move away from being stuck with a particular provider (one reason I'm not moving away from demon to sky is because our email address is demon-based which has me stuck)

so I want to move to a '[email protected]' email address. I have the domain registered, and the host can forward emails to a destination of my choice. So I can receive them at my .mac account. But I can't send any from there that look like they came from [email protected].

 

[jont]

What happens if you use the 'reply to' setting in mac mail - does it mask the sending domain and only show the returning email domain ?

Jon

 

[richard plumb]

'reply to' works if you click 'reply', but it still shows as coming from xxx.mac.com.

Also you have to enter the email address every time you create a mail which is no good. Needs to be simple for my wife to use.

Do I just use the .mac accounts?

BTW, whats the difference between using an alias on my .mac for my wife's email, and setting her up with an email only account?

Also, I'm currently moving all emails out of the inbox into respective 'me' and 'wife' inboxes (lets me combine .mac and ISP POP into one inbox). Would you recommend copying them off instead, and leaving a copy on the server? Never really used IMAP before but it seems a good idea and there is plenty of space.

 

[dodger747]

I use Thunderbird as my e-mail client and it is currently linked to my ISP e-mail account and the .Mac trial account I have set up. Having just checked when sending an e-mail I can choose which account the e-mail originates from by clicking a drop down menu.

I don't know what client you are using but that should solve your problem if I have read your question correctly...

 

[richard plumb]

no

*if* I use my .mac account - eg I have '[email protected]' and '[email protected]', then when I compose a mail I can choose either of them to send the email as.


But I have a personal domain also - eg 'www.richardplumb.com' (its not). I have that set so I can go to www.richardplumb.com and it forwards to my .mac website. Lovely.

I can also set it up so that it forwards emails. So an email to '[email protected]' would be forwarded to '[email protected]'. So I can receive and store them at my .mac account (my personal domain doesn't have any actual mailboxes or storage unless I pay extra).

So an email comes in to '[email protected]', I read it, but if I reply to it, it shows up as coming from '[email protected]'. There is no way I can see to make it look like its really coming from '[email protected]'.

Only solution I can think of is just migrate everyone to my .mac account and ignore my domain, or buy some storage for the domain. But I'd prefer not to do this as want to move away from being tied to my ISP mail, and all I'd be doing is tying myself to someone else. I want the mail to be separate, then just forward it to different providers to give me flexibility to migrate. As good as .mac seems to be so far, it doesn't give me that flexibility...

 

[MrSossidge]

Richard,

Your domain name shouldn't necessarily be linked to your ISP.

If you have richardplumb.com and use Demon internet then all you are doing is using the internet connection to access the richardplumb.com mailbox. If you then change ISP to SKY then you still use the SKY internet connection to access the richardplumb.com mailbox. This is if you pay for a mailbox at richradplumb.com though.

Do you use an email client like Mail or Thunderbird or Entourage or are you using web based email?

An email client would solve your problem i think as you would be able to set up multiple accounts to send mail out meaning you could still just receive .mac email but when you reply, you'd have a dropdown box which you could select [email protected] or [email protected] or any of your .mac accounts.

Hope this helps.

 

[richard plumb]

the problem is I don't have a mailbox at richardplumb.com. Just using it for forwarding.

so in that case, as I use demon, would it be simpler to just forward it to demon mailbox. Then if I switch to sky set the forwarding to sky's mailbox?

Thats what I was tryign to do with .mac, but sending doesn't seem to hold the correct name - always its 'from [email protected]'. What if demon/sky are the same? Suppose I'd just have to buy mailbox space....

Or just use the .mac account names?



BTW, whats a .mac email-only account good for? Why not just use an alias?

 

[MrSossidge]

so in that case, as I use demon, would it be simpler to just forward it to demon mailbox. Then if I switch to sky set the forwarding to sky's mailbox?

Yes, you could just use the forwarding to whoever you ISP is and change the forwarding when you change your ISP. Might be easier and cheaper than buying the mail box space.

Thats what I was tryign to do with .mac, but sending doesn't seem to hold the correct name - always its 'from [email protected]'.

I've just set up an .mac account and tried to do what you want to do in Apple Mail and Entourage and it won't work

Apple Mail won't let me change my outgoing email address (it just keeps the mac.com address) and with Entourage, before mail goes through the mac.com servers it checks the sending email address against the account email address (i used [email protected] as the sending address but it doesn't match [email protected] so the message wouldn't send).


My boss has IMAP mail so that when he is out of the office his PA can view all of his emails from her computer and can also send emails out in his name from her computer which then get stored in his Sent Items folder.

 

[richard plumb]

another question about mail...

I'm currently using multiple accounts (.mac, my ISP email and gmail) and then using rules to move incoming messages to two different folders (my mail, wifes mail)

Now this is OK, but it means I don't have the messags on the server anymore which I assume is one of the benefits of using IMAP - eg the wife can check her messages on the laptop (PC) downstairs and she should be able to delete them from there.

But I dont' know how to do this. My web based .mac mail doens't have the same folders as on my imac. Also how would I go about organising different mailboxes/folders so my wife has one and I have one? The inbox doesn't really work because there are three to check - my ISP has mine and my wifes mixed up, as does my .mac (wife uses an alias).

I could copy them using rules, but then the inbox always stays huge and gets out of date.

So, examples from you of good IMAP usage/organisation please!

 

[Monopot]

Its a limitation in .mac that you can't spoof the return address like you can with other mail services.

I have the same. Got my personal domain forwarding to my ISP email and then have Mail on the Mac picking this up and adding in my personal domain as the reply email. .Mac doesn't support this which is why I won't pay for it.

Instead, I got an IMAP account from 1and1.com and use this in the way above. Lets me have the same .Mac email functionality but with return address spoofing at a fraction of the .Mac cost.

 

[richard plumb]

well it seems that demon at least allow the spoofing as you call it.

So now I have my domain coming through demon, plus my .mac stuff

no point having two, so if the personal one works I might not bother using the .mac one. Although I like the web publishing and backup options so I'll probably keep up the subscription, I don't like the idea of being tied to it - hence getting the personal domain in the first place.


one good thing about the .mac mail though - because its IMAP, I could set the account up on my PC and 'push' all my old mails into the inbox, then logout and download them on the mac. Way simpler than fiddling with importing PSTs

 

[SamRadford]

I have dozens of accounts in Apple Mail, which I use for sending messages to various email groups. I never use the same email address twice so, if I get spammed, I simply disable that address and I don't lose all the mail from other groups.

That reminds me, there's an Apple Mail email user group:
http://www.glodark.com/apple_mail.htm

 

[jont]

Interesting prog in that link Sam - might solve Richards problem another way ? !

http://cutedgesystems.com/software/MailServe/

Jon

 

[SamRadford]

Yes, I use MailServe on my iBook when I'm on holiday. (I know - my wife thinks I'm sad, too!)