And, since an identity can be attached to a folder, couldn't an identity be attached to a recipient's address?

The identity can be attached to a folder quite easily, there is no parsing, it's a single location.  Attaching it to an email address is much more difficult.  The could be hundreds, thousands of addresses in a message.  I am exaggerating a bit but not much.  I was once sent a message with +3000 email addresses in the To: and Cc: fields.  This was pretty unusual since I probably only got one or two a year with thousands but messages with hundreds coming from Outlook and MS Exchange were quite common. Since I retired I still get messages with over 100 addresses in my personal accounts. Since I have 5 domains and over 50 separate email addresses I at least can keep them straight using multiple users. 

To parse the address fields to find a match for one address is quite difficult,  if you have a list of email addresses where you are looking for a match and must check for all matches is very difficult to accomplish.  Now you might be able to code something that only looks at the From: address pretty easily but most people would not find that at all useful.

My basic setup for mail is always the same (I use my ISP's mail service, and I have one set of settings for pretty much everything) but I have a number of personal email addresses which I want to use depending on who I am sending mails to. (Generally, most of these redirect to the same place, but I have one for friends&family, one for public use, one which is a spam trap for lists I know attract too much spam, etc).

I know I could use identities to choose my sending address, but given that everything else is the same, it seems a bit like overkill - I don't want to have to make any settings changes in 3 or more places. From what I've seen by experimenting, if I create an identity based on another, the initial values are copied, but subsequent changes to the "base" identity aren't reflected across to the "derived" one, so that isn't a solution for me.

Is there a lighter-weight way of setting things up so that I can choose a "From" address when I send an email? Ideally, I'd like to automate the choice in many cases, but a simple manual option would be a good starting point.

Thanks,

Paul.

Is there a lighter-weight way of setting things up so that I can choose

a "From" address when I send an email? Ideally, I'd like to automate

the choice in many cases, but a simple manual option would be a good

starting point.

Not that I can see.  The email address is set via the Tools | internet options and the only way that can be changed is throught the use of identities.  You create separate identities and thing you can select the identity to be used when sending.

Maybe this would deserve a new filter feature: If reply to that list, then use the spam trap address.

And so on for other reply addresses. That would be an outgoing mail filtering instead of incoming.

And so on for other reply addresses. That would be an outgoing mail filtering instead of incoming.

The problem is is not just an email address.  The email address/identity tell the program to do a lot more than simply change the From: address.  It might work in your case to just change the From: email address but with most people trying to send with multiple From: and MAIL FROM: addresses requires that the select a different SMTP server at the same time.  Adding a filter that does not do what people think is should do is counter productive at best.

Automatically selecting the From: address based on the message body is a major problem as well. 

1.  In many cases the address to be used in not in the body of the RFC 2822 message.  The SMTP address is the item used for delivery and it's not always available in the message.

2.  The scan of the address field becomes very time consuming where there are a lot of addresses.

3.  String matching can be very difficult when trying to find a match.  If this match is for more than one email address then you run into a more difficlt interface problem.

The easiest way to do this is to use a new mail filter based on something in the mail (could be an email address in the headers) to a folder where you have attached an identity.  All replies and forwarding of mail in the folder then uses the email address of the identity.

[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"]

Adding a filter that does not do what people think is should do is counter productive at best.[/quote]

Certainly, and this can be said of the whole GUI. Presently, I am able to send any mail through my ISP's smtp, whatever the from or pop3 address, so I didn't imagine this could be a problem.

[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"]

The easiest way to do this is to use a new mail filter based on something in the mail (could be an email address in the headers) to a folder where you have attached an identity.  All replies and forwarding of mail in the folder then uses the email address of the identity.[/quote]

And, since an identity can be attached to a folder, couldn't an identity be attached to a recipient's address?