Published by Rob Scaife on 27 Jul 2008 at 10:30 pm
Changing your From address in an email message
Those of us with District email addresses will want our emails to come from that address when we sent Rotary emails, and replies to those messages to come back to that address. Here’s a rundown on how to do this in different email clients. If you know how in an email program not covered here, please let me know!
If your program isn’t listed, odds are the instructions below will point you in the right direction.
Microsoft Outlook
In your email message form, click View on the menu, then From Field on the submenu. This will cause the From: line to appear on your message forms. Leave it blank to send as you always have. To send from your Rotary address, type Your Name <your.name@rotary7040.com> in the from line when you want to send a message from your Rotary address. (All you really need is the email address itself, but putting your name separately in that format makes it look a little better.)
In Outlook 2000, I’m told that you can do it by selecting File | Send Using | <Account>, though I have no way to test that out.
Leo Notenboom also has a great article on how to set up a send-only address.
Gmail
From the Settings page, select the Accounts tab and click Add another address. You’ll be sent a message requiring a response to prove you own the address. Once you confirm, you’ll be able to send mail from that address in gmail, or even use it as your default address.
One Email Account, Multiple Addresses
Now you ask how this is possible.
This most common reason is that you are using an email forwarder in order to “own your own email address”. I explain how to do this on this page.
If you are using an email forwarder, then you may have different addresses forwarded to your one “real” email address.
Consider this example. Assume that you are Gaspar Aluzo. Your “real” address is GAluzo@Earthlink.net. But you own a domain name of GasparAluzo.com. You are using a registrar like NameCheap to forward your email. All email addressed to anything@GasparAluzo.com is actually forwarded to GAluzo@ATT.net. Most people write you as GAluzo@GasparAluzo.com and you have set your reply address to show as GAluzo@GasparAluzo.com (like I explain on this page).
Now you would also like to use another email address. You would like to use TheBigGuy@GasparAluzo.com in your email as a reply address.
(Note that this address will already forward to you. All we are talking about is setting up a second account so you can send some mail with this reply address.)
Because, in this example, you have one real, incoming account, you just need to create an “outgoing” email account in Outlook using this second email address. Here is how:
1. Click “Tools”
2. Click “Accounts”
3. Click on the “Mail Tab”
4. Click on your “primary” or “default” account. This should say “mail (default)” in the “Type” column.
5. Click “Properties”
6. Click on the “Servers” tab
7. Make a note of the value in the “Outgoing mail (SMTP) box. You will use this value below.
8. Click “Cancel”
9. Click “Add”, then “Mail”
10. In the box labeled “Display Name” type your name as you would like it to appear on outgoing email. For example, Gaspar Aluzo might type “Gaspar Aluzo”.
11. Click “Next”
12. In the box labeled “E-mail Address” type the reply address you would like to use. In our example, Gaspar Aluzo would type TheBigGuy@GasparAluzo.com.
13. Click “Next”
14. In the box labeled “Incoming mail (POP3 or IMAP) server”, type five or six zeros. This box is not necessary because this account won’t really “receive” any mail. It will only be used to send mail.
15. In the box labeled “Outgoing mail (SMTP) server”, type the address of the outgoing mail server that you use for your primary account. This is the value you obtained at the start of this process. This second account will send mail through the same outgoing mail server. It will just have a unique “reply address”.
16. Click “Next”
17. In the box labeled “Account name”, leave whatever value appears. It does not matter.
18. In the box labeled “Password”, do not type anything. It does not matter.
19. Leave the box labeled “Remember password” however it is set. It does not matter.
20. Click “Next”
21. On the panel that asks “Which method do you want to use to connect to the Internet?”, I recommend selecting “manually”.
22. Click “Next”
23. Click “Finish”
24. Immediately click on “Properties”. This will reopen the “account” you have just created.
25. Note that the account used the value you specified as the incoming account with your ISP as the “name” of the account. This will be the 5 or six zeros you typed. This name is only used to identify the account within Outlook or Outlook Express. Change this value to something you will easily recognize.
26. Uncheck the box labeled “Include this account when receiving mail or synchronizing”. Remember, this is not an account you will use to receive mail. All your mail is forwarded to your primary account. This is just an account to use to have a special “reply address”.
27. Click “OK”
28. Voila. You are done.
To use this account, click the “pull down” arrow next to the “Send” button on any email. Outlook will reveal all your defined accounts and let you specify which one to use.
In our example, using this second account would cause the email to be sent with a reply address of TheBigGuy@GasparAluzo.com. And anyone who sends mail to that address, will have the mail automatically forwarded to the “real” account at GAluzo@Earthlink.net.