Need Apple Mail Expertise

Written on December 28, 2006 by Nick Santilli and 8 people have commented

I’m not a huge - read: knowledgeable - user of Apple’s Mail program. I use it minimally but haven’t dug too deep into its nooks and crannies. So I’m reaching out to the readers of The Apple Blog for some assistance.

I have 3 accounts setup in my Mail program. When I create an email to send, it [seems to] randomly select the account to send from. So my question is how can I set a priority of accounts? Or even, can someone just explain to me how it chooses the account it’s selected to use as the from-address?

It’s just one of those little things that is slowly driving me crazy and if I could at least understand why it does what it does, I’d be happier. Thanks in advance.

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#1 Vincent says:
The best explanation:

http://www.hawkwings.net/2006/12/06/how-to-set-the-default-new-message-address-in-mailapp/

Hawkings has a great resource for Mail.app
#2 Eduardo Marques says:
I was writing exactly the same thing Vincent!
#3 Nick Santilli says:
beautiful! thanks guys. I knew the readers out there would come through for me.
#4 David King says:
In Mail’s Preferences under the Composing section, look at the “Send new mail from: ” drop-down box.
#5 Ton55 says:
It’s not that hard really. Like David says: it’s all in your Composing prefs. Hawkwings says the same. As for the priority of accounts: it’s a first to last in the main Inbox where all your accounts are gathered. You can rearrange their order by dragging and dropping. So you can drag emailaccount in position 2 to position 1 etc. Asd for how Mail chooses the account it’s selected to use as the from-address: that’s actually rather logic: mail send to your emailaccount 1 will be choosen as the from address when you reply to that message. So the private mail on your private account gets that private emailadress when you reply to someone. And your businessmail etc etc
#6 Simon says:
Account of last mailbox means also that it uses the account currently selected in the inbox.

Turn the inbox triangle down so you see all the accounts, select one and compose a new mail.

It will use that account to send.

Simon
#7 Nick says:
Yes, but only in 10.4. Under 10.3.x you have to live with those nuisances.

Mail is slowly driving me crazy as I try to figure out if Thunderbird isn’t a better alternative. If importing mail over wasn’t such a big deal, I probably would have.

Eventually, the same account appears as the default with me. One other thing DRIVES ME CRAZY is I am a keyboard guy. I love scrolling through the body of the selected message using the arrow keys. Instead of scrolling through the bidy it jumps to the next message, regardless of whether I selected the email, selected text in the body space, etc. I hope the next versions improve on some native apps ship with OSX. It would be a good kick in the pants for MS.
#8 James says:
this is the biggest, sloppiest, mess of ads i have ever seen. how hideous. and fix your layout. it’s ugly in firefox.