How can I fake a "from" address in Thunderbird?

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I have an e-mail address from a provider which does not provide me with an inbox, only redirection. In other words, all messages sent to that address will simply be redirected to an address I choose. Nor can I send mail from that address.

This is my primary address. It's easy to remember, easy to spell. I want to use it for incoming and outgoing mail.

Previously, I had this set up with Gmail. Mail sent to the address would be redirected to my Gmail address. And, in Gmail, if I replied to that mail, or if I wrote a new message, the From address would be faked to that address. (Gmail would also add a Sender address of my actual Gmail address, so that the messages would not get caught by spam filters.)

I now have moved away from Gmail. I am redirecting my e-mail to a different address: contact@example.net (my own domain).

This is what I want:

  1. When I reply to a message in Thunderbird, the From address is set to be the same as the To address, even if that address is a different domain.
  2. The Sender address is always set to contact@example.net, to avoid spam filters.
  3. No matter what the From address is, the mail is always actually sent from the mail.example.net server, using the login details for the contact@example.net account.
  4. To cope with the weirdness of Microsoft Outlook, and the strange ways it behaves when it gets mail with From and Sender addresses, the Reply-To address is always set to be the same as the From address.
  5. When I write a new message, not a reply, I should get a choice of From addresses. Ideally, the default would be my non-mailbox address.

This question is closely related to Set Thunderbird "from" address by incoming "to" address, but there are a couple of differences:

  1. I have two different domains, and one does not provide mail services, so I need to fake the From address and use a Sender address.
  2. I want my default From address to be faked.

This is an IMAP account. Thunderbird is running on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

TRiG

Posted 2014-06-15T13:40:21.503

Reputation: 1 058

1Given that you want to control most of the setup, how about running your own mail server. Then you can control every aspect of the setup of the email headers. On the client side, you can use the Virtual Identity add-on to automate the email address selection if you have many, but Thunderbird will automatically choose the right one if it has a match in its identities (this is independent of outgoing server). – Paul – 2014-06-15T13:44:31.127

Just change your email address in your account setup. – Majenko – 2014-06-15T15:44:22.980

Answers

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Go to "Extra->Account Settings". Click the "Manage Identities" button and add an identity (using your alternate email address).

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Close the settings dialog and compose a new email. You can select an email address from the "From" dropdown in the top of the window:

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mtak

Posted 2014-06-15T13:40:21.503

Reputation: 11 805

This works, ish. It does not set a Sender address. E-mail goes through, but there's a danger it may be marked as spam. – TRiG – 2014-06-20T14:17:13.013

Asked: 2014-06-15T13:40:21.503

Viewed: 3 833 times

Active: 2020-01-28T11:01:30.163