Gary, I could certainly use my ISP SMTP and not my work Exchange when creating new messages. But when I reply to something that’s come in on my work email, which is what I’m doing maybe 97% of the time, your suggestion doesn’t help - the default is automatically to reply via my work email.
Also, I got involved in this discussion just now because I’m watching this thread and Scott posted to it. I’ve not desire to contact support for what is clearly a feature request that has been requested over and over by different people; nothing has changed recently from my point of view.
Yes Dean, because it will reply using the account that matches the address it is sent to. For my suggestion to work you need to remove the work Exchange account from eM Client and have your work messages forwarded to the ISP account. Then all messages are received and sent via the ISP account, by default with the work address, but those sent to the ISP address (which is setup as the alias) will reply from the ISP address.
Sorry for the noise bltibbels! (And merry Yuletide! ;-) )
Gary, certainly I could route _everything_ through my ISP mail account using forwarding, but that’s a very drastic change, and removes a lot of existing functionality (e.g. Exchange calender/tasks/contacts/non-inbox-folders; and also the option of easily switching SMTP server if my preferred one goes down).
It’s very quite annoying to me that I keep having to change the sender drop-down on nearly every large email I send, but it’s not worth doing _that_ to avoid it!
So I think I’ll leave my system set up as it currently is for now, and continue to hope that eM Client adds this feature request at some point in the future.
I hope I’ve been able to clarify that there is indeed at least one genuine use-case for this feature, that isn’t equivalently achievable any other way… and it’s not a particularly esoteric situation either - I’m sure there are lots of people in the same boat.
eM Client weighs feature requests more heavily from Pro License users, so if you have a Pro License, please open a support ticket with eM Client detailing your request.
Otherwise, in the 5 years that this thread has been running, only two users (Scott and Huber) have indicated here that they have the same question. So I think it unlikely that eM Client would change the whole concept of alias just so a few users can misuse the feature. There are also some hurdles to changing that behavior as eM Client requires an address have both send and receive to be marked as default. Because that is not the function of the alias, it would mean a complete change in the way the application deals with accounts.
Also, I think maybe there’s some misunderstanding, because no change of underlying behavior is being requested here. _ All _ this is about is giving users the ability to change which selection in this drop-down comes up automatically :
So this is _purely_ a UI issue, requiring only that few extra things be user-definable in the settings dialogs.
i.e. You ought to be able to override the default choice separately for both new messages and for replies; per-folder/per-account or as a global override; and (for people who switch between aliases or accounts regularly) there should be an empty “force me to choose every time” option. Probably there also should be a way to specify a different default based on the address of the email you’re replying to.
Obviously the “Settings” dialog for this could get to be reasonably complicated, if you implemented all of the above as described, but the underlying feature - changing the initial choice shown in the drop down - ought to be entirely trivial to implement!
(For my own purposes, I’d be happy with a single global override, i.e. the ability to set it to default to the same account+alias, no matter who I’m replying to or which folder I’m in… though I’m sure that probably wouldn’t be adequate for everyone).
Dear Gary (and anyone else who may following this thread),
I became aware of your recent conversation with Dean because I’m an erstwhile contributor to this thread. Well done Dean for having the perseverance to keep up the dialogue. I entirely agree with you (all be it I couldn’t follow much of the ISP/SMTP related stuff!). My use of this feature is for no other reason than I have my own domain that I use purely for email redirection. So I want my emails to appear to appear to come from and to return to that ‘alias’. The emClient feature works just fine. All I have to do is remember to use it!
No clever change in underlying system behaviour is required. Just a simple ability to have an alternative drop down feature flagged as default.
And indeed there have been many requests for this over the years.
If you don’t have a Pro License, you cannot use this application for business use!! That is a direct violation of the license agreement you accepted when registering for your Free License.
No clever change in underlying system behaviour is required. Just a simple ability to have an alternative drop down feature flagged as default.
No, this is a request to have the application handle default email accounts differently. Or rather to enable aliases as a default email account. Because that is what appears in a new message as the sender address; it is the default email account.
The current system is that if an email account does not have both send and receive abilities, it cannot be made a default account. You can try this yourself by adding an SMTP only account. It cannot be made default.
That means that you cannot have it as the default sending address when composing new messages. It is that simple. The default account also affects how new messages are created when not in the Mail section of eM Client, as well as handling calendar invites for local folder calendars, or those where the server does not handle sending invitations. There are other ways as well where the default email account comes into play.
Now you want to introduce an alias (which is not even an email account) as the default. I guess because that is not possible, that is why eM Client Inc. have not implemented such a feature.
In the event that you want all messages, or even 97% of messages to come from a specific email address, that is not what the alias feature is meant for. Rather setup an account with the intended email address, and use the alias for all other addresses.
Well, we seem to be going in circles, but I’ll give this one last try:
Suppose we forget about default accounts, aliases, etc, and all other eM internals, and put it this way:
I’d like a feature, that when creating a new message (either a reply or from scratch), such that when the window first comes up, eM Client will, based on certain settings that I can specify, insert a click into that drop-down I circled above, just as if I’d done it manually.
In other words, I’m asking to be able to automate an action that the existing UI already provides for. This manifestly does not require changing anything about the way eM Client operates internally. Call it something like an “automatic action” (UI scripting?) if you like, and leave the “Default Account” settings and everything otherwise related to that just exactly as it currently is!
Also, BTW, I only use eM Client at home, not for work. (My office uses MS Outlook instead). My work did provide me with an email account that I use as my main email for personal non-work-related things, however, which is why my eM Client has a “work” email account in it in my above examples.
If I might make a suggestion:
You could set a Reply-To Header with an alias, if it was an option, which would go a long way to achieving what you are looking for. And dare I say it, set the from header to [email protected]
But, if your mail server sets your Return-path header to your real email address, which it is very likely to do, then your real email address is not hidden from anyone who knows how to view full headers.
Your real email address must always be used to send the email since your alias does not have a password and can not be authenticated at send time. Just send yourself an email and look at the full headers. That return-path header is set by the mail server and can not be hidden by em client if I understand how email works under the skin.
So what you asking for would make eM Client less than compliant with good practice since it would be obfuscating who the real sender is. That is what spammers try and do.
Ummm… I think you’ve completely misunderstood Rob. I’m pretty sure that’s mostly what using an alias already does. This feature request isn’t about whether you can do that or not, it’s about making it happen automatically vs having to set it manually for each individual email; i.e. about being able to set eM Client’s _default_ behaviour.
No new actual capabilities (regarding the email headers eM Client sends, etc) are being requested here.
Dean,
I haven’t misunderstood. I just didn’t think it necessary to explain fully in detail.
Well here it is:
An option by account to use the Reply-to: header with an alias of your choice.
The From: header should be filled with anything you like but [email protected] is in common usage.
The Reply-to: header should be filled with your chosen alias.
The Reply-to: header is shown in email sent and received as well as From: header.
The email must be sent with actual email account since it required for authetication but that is not shown in email unless headers are viewed and user knows what they are looking at.
This would require developers to modify eM Client to add this option and show Reply-to: headers as well as From: header.
The benefit is that you are not misleading the recipient by saying the message is from an email address which can’t be used to send email. That means the eM Client remains a good practice compliant email client ( I think ).
Rob, I haven’t actually checked what eM Client currently does with the headers, when you select an alias as the sending address; possibly it sets the “From” header, or possibly “Reply-To” as you suggest it should. (Though I somehow doubt it resets “From” to “noreply@…” in the latter case; but OTOH I think you might be able to leave out “From” altogether if you have both “Sender” and “Reply-To”? Maybe?) .
I understand what you’re saying, and I’d certainly agree that eM Client should follow best practice in this regard… but that’s really an entirely different issue to the one under discussion in this thread. If you don’t think eM Client is doing the right thing with its headers when you use an alias, or if you want more control over which headers get sent for a particular alias, you should certainly start a separate thread of your own, requesting that! …I’d say it was a good idea!
This thread, however, is specifically (and only) about having eM Client select an alias automatically, VS having to do so manually for each email you send.
As aliases are an existing feature, this thread is not a request to change the way they currently work (in regard to headers, etc), which from an eM Client programmer’s perspective, would be a whole entirely different thing! (And probably a much bigger deal ).
And I’m sorry, but I have to say - trying to shoehorn in this tangentially-related headers stuff right at the end of a long existing back-and-forth discussion is really not the best strategy to get the eM Client staff to notice & prioritize it…
The alias feature is not meant to be a default account. That is not it’s function. Get over it already!!
Why persist in asking to change an implementation that is meant as something else? Next I suppose there will be a request to have the Trash included in conversations because, you know, people file messages in the Trash folder. No, don’t scoff, you will be surprised at how many actually do that. Seriously. There was even one user on this forum who used the Junk folder for filing unread messages that needed further attention. Seriously!!!
Besides, this thread is unlikely to be considered as a feature request as in the 5 years it has been running, only two other users have said they have the same question.
So, rather use the default account for the default email address as that is already implemented.
Why are you becoming so rude and hostile? All we’re asking for is a minor UI tweak to a useful existing feature.
I typed “default alias” into the search above and saw five other threads requesting this tweak without even scrolling down much. A real effort at finding requests like this would undoubtedly turn up many more.
Granted, all of us just want to save the two seconds it takes to click the “From” pulldown and choose the alias. But if you do that dozens of times a day it gets pretty tedious - especially if you’re a keyboard-only user and have to tab & arrow around. Is it really going to cause the collapse of civilization if the app we spend all day using lets us skip that action?
If you don’t want the UI tweak, all you have to do is stop following this thread.
Why are you becoming so stupid? This is NOT what the alias is meant for.
If you want a default email account to appear in a new message, setup a default email account. How stupid must you be not to see that? If you, or any other users are having to change the from address for 97% of your messages, then you are doing something wrong. The alias feature is NOT what you should be using; just setup an account with the address you want to send most of your emails from, and set it as the default account. I absolutely guarantee that when you start a new message where the default email address is automatically chosen, it will be that one. You won’t have to waste even a single second to change it.
If you don’t like eM Client’s alias feature, all you have to do is stop using the application.
