Removing receipt request from Mail - How?

Hello all,

In an effort to help a friend with how to enable a receipt request within Mail, I am now on the hunt for a fix on reversing the process.

Mail now successfully requests a user receipt, upon opening at the other end, however....the reply from the recipient never makes it back to the sender, it instead bounces back - TWICE - into their inbox (the replyer).

Below is the walkthrough that was used;

* Open Terminal.
* Type "defaults read com.apple.mail UserHeaders".
* Press Enter.
* If that command returns "The domain/default pair of (com.apple.mail, UserHeaders) does not exist":
o Type
+ defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '{"Disposition-Notification-To" = "Name <email@address>"; }'
replacing Name with your name and email@address with your email address.
+ The complete line could read "defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '{"Disposition-Notification-To" = "Heinz Tschabitscher <[email protected]>"; }'", for example.
* If the "defaults read" command above returns a line of values that starts with "{" and ends in "}":
o Highlight the entire line. It might read something like {Bcc = "[email protected]"; }, for example.
o Press Command-C.
o Type "defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '" (excluding the outer quotation marks).
o Press Command-V.
o Type "'".
o Insert '"Disposition-Notification-To" = "Name <email@address>"; ' in front of the closing "}" character, replacing Name with your name and email@address with your email address.
The line might now read
+ defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '{Bcc = "[email protected]"; "Disposition-Notification-To" = "Heinz Tschabitscher <[email protected]>"; }'
, for example.
* Press Enter.
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The fix for removing all of this is;

To turn requesting a read receipt for every message back off:

* Execute "defaults delete com.apple.mail UserHeaders" at Terminal command prompt to delete all custom headers or set UserHeaders back to what it was before you added "Disposition-Notification-To".
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Unfortunately, the reversal command has had no effect at all - If the USER plist file for Mail is deleted in an attempt to reset Mail, will it have any effect? Or, will this setting remain in place?

Argh!!

First, it would have been a good idea to make a backup copy of the com.apple.mail.plist file before you made any changes, since that would have made it trivial to fall-back. Yes, you can delete that file and start over, but that's where all the Mail account info (not the actual messages, though - those are in a different folder) is stored so that's kind of a major change. It looks like all you did was add a new entry to the Mail .plist file, so deleting it should undo what you did. However, if Mail created some additional entries as a side effect of that change then you may have to dig through the .plist file to find them. If you have a backup, such as a Time Machine backup, that would be the easiest solution. Otherwise, try double-clicking on the .plist file. If you have the Developer tools installed then the Property List Editor will open and you can rummage around that file and look for things that might be causing trouble. If you're lucky you'll find that the new "UserHeaders" key is still in there and you can manually delete it. If you're not lucky you may have to dig harder. Note that you should *never* change a .plist file for an application that's still running, so make sure you exit completely out of Mail when you do any of this stuff.

Good luck!

Hi DjDawson,

Thanks for the reply.

I did wonder whether hunting around for the plist file in a time machine backup would be worthwile. I just have one question - I'm assuming that the com.apple.mail.plist file that needs to be replaced will be from the USER library and not the HD library, is this correct?

If we delete the current com.apple.mail.plist file (the one with the amendments), and then immediately replace it with our older, untouched version, I'm guessing that Mail won't have chance to realise that the plist file has been deleted and subsequently replaced - is this the case?