362529 - When replying, the "From" should be automatically selected based on the "To" in the replied mail

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[Tal Cohen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0
Build Identifier: TB version 1.5.0.8 (20061025)

I use several mail addresses, and a drop-down list allows me to select a "From" address whenever I compose new mail. However, the default is always the same. I think it would be very useful to have an option for a "case-sensitive" default; if I reply to a mail sent "To:" address X, which is the address of one of the accounts, then the "From" field will default to X.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

That's how it works right now, isn't it? (Or rather the account to which it's delivered, but that's the same unless you have some server side filtering.) It's case sensitive though I think. IMAP or POP?

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #1)
> That's how it works right now, isn't it? (Or rather the account to which it's
> delivered, but that's the same unless you have some server side filtering.)

Not quite -- if a single account has multiple identities, the identity chosen is always the default for that account, not necessarily the identity it was sent to.  I think that's what reporter is talking about.

If so: what's being requested is how things used to work, after the first attempt at "smart identity picking" but before the X-Account-Key header was implemented.  As I recall, smart picking wasn't working correctly in all cases, altho I don't remember the details.

Comment 3

[Tal Cohen]

> That's how it works right now, isn't it?

No, it isn't. In particular, I'm using a single "Local Folders" scheme; this could have an effect about it. Either way, all my emails reach a single physical mailbox, but multiple forwarding addresses are used. I have "Account details" for some of these forwarding addresses, so they appear in my "From:" drop-down list, but when replying, the default "From:" is always the same. Which is what I'd like to change with this RFE.

Comment 4

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Sounds like a duplicate of bug 327713...

Comment 5

[Keith Moore]

It's not clear that using the To address of the subject message as the From address of the reply is the right thing to do.  In particular, it's common to forward mail from an old address to a new one, and to want replies that were forwarded in this way to come from the new address in order to discourage use of the old address.  In such cases it would still be reasonable to associate the "old" address with the new mailbox in the mail reader, say for spam filtering purposes.

Comment 6

[a_geek]

Keith: I can confirm that blindly copying the original Cc: address to the To: field is the wrong thing to do. I regularly use this addressing scheme:

from: me
to: other
cc: me

Now, if I want to reply to this thread, I press "reply all", and get an edit window with these settings:

from: me
to: me
cc: other

which is ugly to say the least. Instead, it should be

from: me
to: other
cc: me

So far, I switch recipients manually, unless I forget it while being in a hurry (= often :( ), but it would be MUCH better if TB could do it automatically. FWIW, mutt does it the correct way.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Magnus Melin from comment #4)
> Sounds like a duplicate of bug 327713...

Aceman, do you agree with Magnus?

Comment 8

[:aceman]

I am not sure about that. Bug 327713 seems to imply that if you add all the needed identities to the mail collecting account that the problem is fixed (From on replies is selected properly). Comment 3 here somehow does not say that. I even don't know how many accounts has the reporter configured in TB.
Maybe these comments here are old and the new workaround in bug 327713 would work for the reporter today.

Comment 9

[a_geek]

Maybe this is a little off-topic, but I use separate folder hierarchies for each account (currently four), and have one or more applicable identities configured for each of them. Should I file a different bug for my problem?

Comment 10

[Moz.rs9z]

I can confirm that in Thunderbird 12, this is still an issue for me. I have a setup much like the original filer Tal Cohen. I have an account that permits an arbitrary number of 'disposable' e-mails which I routinely use as e-mails for different web sites. When such a site sends me an e-mail to the disposable address, I reply back but need to remember to switch the 'From' address to match the 'To' address on the message I've received (and also set up an identity if I haven't already). Simply replying to the 'To' address on the e-mail instead of to the default address associated with the seems like an obvious thing to me. After all, if it wasn't valid, I would likely not have received the e-mail. 

In my case, I'm not using the global in-box. Even if I were. it's always valid in my case to reply using the 'To' address as the 'from' address in that reply, as long as there is one. If I mailed someone at [e-mail] I'd be very suspicious if they replied back from [e-mail] but that's exactly the behaviour this is causing for my correspondents. Some mailing lists I'm on actually bounce my messages if I forget to switch the 'from' address as a result, since they don't have me registered under the account e-mail (only under the identity I've set up for it).

Comment 11

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

[e-mail]: you need to set up identities for each disposable address. We can't always simply reply by setting To to From address as that To address may not be you (think BCC/lists). Therefore, an identity needs to be set up in thunderbird.

Comment 12

[Moz.rs9z]

You're right - there are lots of cases where the to: address (even if just one) might not be me. I'd be happy if it would switch the from: address to any to: address that matches an identity I've set up.