Mail (both desktop and iPhone) sends reply from different account?

I've noticed something that is really starting to **** me off and I'm hoping that someone can help me rectify the situation.

I have a couple of different email accounts (all of which are set up on all of my Apple devices).
For some reason, both my iMac Mail program and my iPhone's Mail program will receive an email from somebody on one of my email accounts, BUT....when I hit the reply button, it sends the reply from a DIFFERENT email account.
Why is it doing this?
I know I have it set up for one of my accounts to be the "default SENDING" account....but anybody with half a brain would assume that that means when you compose a NEW email, not when you're replying to an email that you received.

Please let me know how to stop this from happening as I'm trying to maintain an email thread with people, which is impossible when both of my Mail programs seem to just randomly pick ANY email account to send the reply from.

Thanks,

J.

For some reason, both my iMac Mail program and my iPhone's Mail program will receive an email from somebody on one of my email accounts, BUT....when I hit the reply button, it sends the reply from a DIFFERENT email account.
Why is it doing this?

Click to expand...

It may be that "autofill" is choosing the sending account alphabetically. In other words if you have three accounts:

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

The first account "[email protected]" will be chosen. Autofill does choose addresses alphabetically but I don't know for sure if it does the same when replying. Is it always picking your default account or is it a random thing?

chscag said:

It may be that "autofill" is choosing the sending account alphabetically. In other words if you have three accounts:

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

The first account "[email protected]" will be chosen. Autofill does choose addresses alphabetically but I don't know for sure if it does the same when replying. Is it always picking your default account or is it a random thing?

Click to expand...

The email account I keep RECEIVING emails on starts with an "N", and the one the Mail program keeps choosing starts with an "H". However, I also have an email address that starts with an "A", so it's not choosing the highest alphabetical email account to send from.
The only thing I can think of is that it's not smart enough to figure out that replying to a message should negate the "Default Sending" account (my terminology, not the developers).

I'm trying to think if because I'm clicking on the pop-up email notification on the top right margin of my iMac, if somehow the Mail program looks at which account is actually currently active in the Mail window (not the email itself, but the actual program window).

Okay....Now I REALLY confused.

Okay....Now I REALLY confused.

I sent someone an email last night from within my iMac's Mail program.
I took ALL of my other emails OFFLINE before I sent this email.
I made sure that the only ONLINE email account was the one that I wanted the email to come from.

See Pic # 1

However, I got a reply to my email shortly thereafter, but it was to a different email account.
Apparently my Mail program decided to also send the email from another email account THAT WAS OFFLINE.

See Pic # 2

Check the time stamps on the right of both pictures.

1) Why is my Mail program sending the same email from two different accounts?, and
2) How is it even able to send from the second account when that one is OFFLINE?

This just gets more confusing by the minute....

I went to the actual outbound email and saw the timeline history.

See "No One You Know"?.....that belongs to the ONLY email address that was online and that I sent the email from.

See "<[email protected]>"?.....that's the second email that my Mail program decided to send from also (even though it was OFFLINE).

Why is Mail saying that "No One You Know" is the display name for "<[email protected]>"?.....they are two totally different accounts?

On your iMac, open Mail, then select Preferences and Accounts. If your email is POP, then you will see a box labeled "Email Address:" on the right side. Despite how it sounds, that is the email address you want Mail to show to the recipient. The actual outgoing mail server is lower on that page, where it says "Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP):" You can put any email address in the block where it says "Email Address" but the default is what you put for the Incoming Mail Server portion. SO if you get mail at [email protected] but want your recipient to see [email protected], then put othername@someplace else in the "Email Address" space.

If your email is IMAP, there is a box labeled "Alias" where you can put whoever you want to display to your recipient. It defaults to your real email address, but again, you can put anything there.

Also, if you have more than one SMTP outgoing server, when you compose an email in Mail you will be shown which address is being shown in the "From" window of the composed email and the SMTP server right beside it. You can use the up/down arrows to change either of those windows to whatever you want the recipient to see and Mail to use. I think if you choose an account which is offline, it will go online to send the email, and if you have provided the password in the account setup, it happens automatically. I can't say why it seemed to use BOTH for you at the same time for ONE email.