How to use several reply-to addresses with one account?

[Richard Berg]

The primary way I filter email is to give different groups of people
different addresses that all forward to the same place. Family members get
(e-mail address removed), friends get (e-mail address removed), job offers go to (e-mail address removed),
etc. etc. in finer detail.

When I was using Outlook 2K with a couple random POP/IMAP servers, I just
created several dummy accounts (send only; autoreceive disabled) that had
different reply-to addresses but all pointed to the same SMTP server.
However, that's not good enough anymore.
(1) my email load continues to increase; I don't have time to mess with an
ugly hack
(2) for related reasons, I've switched to Outlook 2003 + Exchange 2003
(shared/leased), which appear to be stricter about letting me do this

So...does a plugin exist which would let me select different reply-to
addresses on the fly? If not, would it be easy to write? The absolute best
be an additional text field that lets you type while providing contextual
suggestions and a button to produce a drop-down list of the most common
choices (basically, just like send-to does).

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

The primary way I filter email is to give different groups of people
different addresses that all forward to the same place. Family
members get (e-mail address removed), friends get (e-mail address removed), job offers go
to (e-mail address removed), etc. etc. in finer detail.

When I was using Outlook 2K with a couple random POP/IMAP servers, I
just created several dummy accounts (send only; autoreceive disabled)
that had different reply-to addresses but all pointed to the same
SMTP server. However, that's not good enough anymore.
(1) my email load continues to increase; I don't have time to mess
with an ugly hack
(2) for related reasons, I've switched to Outlook 2003 + Exchange 2003
(shared/leased), which appear to be stricter about letting me do this

So...does a plugin exist which would let me select different reply-to
addresses on the fly? If not, would it be easy to write? The
absolute best be an additional text field that lets you type while
providing contextual suggestions and a button to produce a drop-down
list of the most common choices (basically, just like send-to does).

If you're using Exchange only, and these are all addresses defined in your
mailbox, you can't choose which address you're sending to without changing
the default/reply address on your mailbox properties in ADUC. Not fun. See
if http://www.ivasoft.biz/choosefrom.shtml looks useful - there's no native
way to do this without setting up multiple objects (mailboxes, DLs, etc) -
one for each additional SMTP address and granting "send as" rights on them
to your own mailbox.

If you're using a hosted Exchange server, you can't really do what you want.

 

[Richard Berg]

Looks like the only solutions involve sidestepping Exchange. (Thus, none of
them will ever affect OWA ). For now, I've recreated the most common
dummy accounts and exported them into a file I can easily transport. I'm
also playing with the SmartFrom tool linked from that same guy's website, but
so far it doesn't seem to do much.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Looks like the only solutions involve sidestepping Exchange. (Thus,
none of them will ever affect OWA ). For now, I've recreated the
most common dummy accounts and exported them into a file I can easily
transport. I'm also playing with the SmartFrom tool linked from that
same guy's website, but so far it doesn't seem to do much.

It works fine - what problems are you having? Remember, evals don't usually
work like full products. If you control the server itself (i.e., you can
install software on it), I think it's just what you need. Contact Victor by
email if you need more info on it.

Nothing is going to help you with OWA, sorry. But you couldn't do what you
wanted with your former ISP's webmail or anything either, could you....

 

[Richard Berg]

It works fine - what problems are you having? Remember, evals don't usually

work like full products. If you control the server itself (i.e., you can
install software on it), I think it's just what you need. Contact Victor by
email if you need more info on it.

I'm dumb, I didn't notice that SmartFrom (a client plugin) requires
ChooseFrom in order to work. Regardless, it was quite annoying to learn that
had I chosen to buy this $15 app, I'd technically have to buy the $199
version of the library its author uses, since the author was too cheap to do
so himself.

Nothing is going to help you with OWA, sorry. But you couldn't do what you
wanted with your former ISP's webmail or anything either, could you....

FWIW, my previous solution was to keep one machine always on with Remote
Desktop running. This did work but is less preferable for a variety of
reasons.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

I'm dumb, I didn't notice that SmartFrom (a client plugin) requires
ChooseFrom in order to work. Regardless, it was quite annoying to
learn that had I chosen to buy this $15 app, I'd technically have to
buy the $199 version of the library its author uses, since the author
was too cheap to do so himself.

Well, the guy has to make a living, doesn't he? If you could code, you could
perhaps write this yourself, but I think the time/effort it would require
would far outweigh the cost of buying his stuff.

FWIW, my previous solution was to keep one machine always on with
Remote Desktop running. This did work but is less preferable for a
variety of reasons.

OK.