[Tee]

Okay, I own a domain xyz.com and I sometimes want to send emails with different senders.

Sending and receiving for the domain is setup through a single catchall account: catchall@xyz.com

I might want to create several mail personalities like, dr_evil@xyz.com and minime@xyz.com and no2@xyz.com

All accounts would use the same mail settings for POP, SMTP and username - only the email addresses would differ.

PROBLEM: Apple Mail chokes on this setup.
I guess because it keeps track of accounts by POP server?
It gets confused and thinks a mailbox is already open and ends up screwing up the mailboxes...

[car1son]

What I think you want to do is this:

Set up one account, catchall@xyz.com, normally. username=catchall. You plan to receive all mail from this address (via POP).

Set up another account, dr_evil@xyz.com. This isn't an address known to your POP server, so you never receive on this address. Set the outgoing mail server to something like "neversend.nowhere.net" and set the username to "dr_evil"; leave the password blank. (Since you'll never receive on this address, it won't care.) On the Advanced tab of the Edit Account dialog, uncheck "Include when automatically checking for mail". Set the Outgoing mail server to your usual SMTP server.

You should now we able to select the Dr_Evil mailbox and compose a message to be "sent" on that account, and it will appear to be from dr_evil@xyz.com.

You may also want to set up a Rule so if the "To" address of incomming mail contains "dr_evil" you'll transfer it automatically to the Dr_Evil mailbox (since it will have arrived from the "catchall" account.)

It would also be nice to be able to set up Mail so if you click "Reply" while examining a message sent to dr_evil (but actually received on the catchall account) the from will be "dr_evil" again (and not "catchall"). I figured out how to do that automatically with a rule-triggered Applescript on Entourage, but I just don't use Mail enough to know how for Mail.) So, you'll need to remember when clicking Reply to adjust the Account in the pull-down on the compose.

That's if I understand your setup properly.

[Tee]

Excellent advice!

Originally posted by car1son:
What I think you want to do is this:

Set up one account, catchall@xyz.com, normally. username=catchall. You plan to receive all mail from this address (via POP).

Set up another account, dr_evil@xyz.com. This isn't an address known to your POP server, so you never receive on this address. Set the outgoing mail server to something like "neversend.nowhere.net" and set the username to "dr_evil";

Not the outgoing server, the POP server, right?

leave the password blank. (Since you'll never receive on this address, it won't care.) On the Advanced tab of the Edit Account dialog, uncheck "Include when automatically checking for mail". Set the Outgoing mail server to your usual SMTP server.

You should now we able to select the Dr_Evil mailbox and compose a message to be "sent" on that account, and it will appear to be from dr_evil@xyz.com.

That's if I understand your setup properly.

Yup! I will give it a try.
I just wish that Mail hadn't deleted all of my dr_evil mail when I removed the minime account. Apparently it got confused and thought that all mail in any account with the catchall settings belonged to the same account. Now all of dr_evil's email is gone!!!

[johnpg]

There's an easier solution, with only one small problem.

In the account settings you can list multiple email addresses separated by commas. Then mail will let you choose from a dropdown list which one to use (and will choose the correct one automatically if you reply to an email that was sent to a given address).

The only problem is that the Full Name field cannot be comma separated, so you have to use the same name for each account. If that's a problem, the only work around I've found is to just leave it blank and go by your email address only.

Cheers,
John