Reply does not have correct default account
I recently had to change my main email address to a gmail account. I created the new account within TB and deleted the old email address account, and also changed my address formally with Yahoo Groups and various other subscriptions. I get daily email from private parties and email groups, as well as activism and info emails from various sources. Most of the time, when I reply to an email, the resulting reply has the correct, new, main default address. Sometimes, though, the "From" address has now changed to another email account within TB that I rarely use and absolutely do not want to appear on my daily emails. I am worried that I'm not catching a lot of these. The email account that TB chooses, btw, is the next in line in the list of accounts under Tools/Account Settings.
I do notice that this happens virtually every single email on a busy Yahoo Group I'm on, where the incoming email is correctly addressed to my gmail account but when I reply to a group email the resulting email is now "From" that other, unwanted address. I'm so confused and it's maddening because I have to re-send the email every time. I should not have to check the From on everything I send.
What is going on and what should I do to fix this? I have looked in the archives but haven't found a solution that I could understand. I have some computer skills but this is beyond me.
Thank you for your help.
All Replies (18)
The receiving account will usually be the sender in a reply. Even if you reply from Local Folders. Thats the most common use. If you forward it will pick the account you are forwarding from If you use just a single smtp-server for both accounts, it will use that server but from-address is still the receiving account
Only exception I found is when you forward from Local Folders, then it picks your default address instead.
Well, yes, ok. But in fact, TB is choosing not the receiving account, but a different sender in replies. That is the issue.
I have just done some more testing and it seems that this problem occurs in all of my Yahoo Groups email and all of my Facebook notifications (I'm on a couple of active Facebook groups). I have my groups sorted into separate mailboxes, and just now I tested several separate groups. They all reply to the incorrect address, the same nonreceiving address that is next in line in the list of accounts within TB. So it would appear to be something about the Yahoo Groups and Facebook headers, which must mean it's something about headers that have an individual sender processed through a group. Or something.
I'm unable to reproduce this problem by sending myself a test email with differing From and Reply To addresses.
Modified
Is your Facebook email-address same as the wrong-sender-address? And same q about Yahoo's.
Thank you! No, not at all. I am using the exact same address for all this email I've described. The wrong-sender-address is one related to our music website that never gets any email to or from it. It purely is being plucked out of the accounts list by TB.
I have a hard time figuring out how it can happen. So bear with me, You get mail on account 1. Do you move it somewhere? You reply to all, sender or list? Or do you forward, as inline?
From address are then changed somehow to that of account 2, which shouldn't happen and is wrong.
Your server settings for account 1 is in
- "Default signature" correct? and
- "outgoing server is" correct?
- "Manage signatures" is right
I appreciate your help, thank you.
When the mail comes in the groups/Facebook mail is automatically sorted into various mailboxes, for instance each Yahoo group has its own mailbox, and the Facebook notifications has its own mailbox. So in that sense, the mail is moved somewhere. It is the mail within those mailboxes that is not replying properly. Mail in my standard IN box replies correctly.
I simply "reply", in general. However, I just tried "Reply to All" from within a mailbox and TB used the wrong address still. I don't often forward, but I tested it just now. Mail within the mailboxes forwards to the wrong address. Mail in my IN box forwards, replies, and replies to all correctly (i.e. From field is Account 1, the default address).
Checking the settings for Account 1: I can't find a setting for "default signature", but it does properly send/display my signature. Outgoing server is correct (pop.gmail.com). I don't know what "Manage signatures" is but "Manage identities" only has the 1 email address in it, the same address that is supposed to be the default, Account 1.
Thanks again, I appreciate the help.
One more thing. I actually deleted the next account in the list (the one that TB is plucking erroneously) just to see what would happen, because that email is basically obsolete anyway. TB still is replying wrongly, it's using the new #2 in the accounts list.
I'll ask for some more help. In the meantime could you do those standard procedures / questions :
In order for us to better investigate this issue you need to add a little more non-personal information.
Please add the troubleshooting information to your post To find the Troubleshooting information:
- Open Help (or click on three-line-icon and select Help)
- Choose Troubleshooting Information
- Use the button Copy to clipboard to select all. Do not check box "Include account names"!
- Paste this in your post.
Please also add the result of these troubleshooting steps to your post
- Does Thunderbird work in TB Safe mode (see Thunderbird Safe Mode)?
- Do you use anti-virus and firewall software? What is the version?
Please post back with this information and any other questions you might have.
Thank you! I had to truncate the file so it would fit in comment box, let me know if you need the truncated data. Sending other info in next comment.
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Crash Reports http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-49dee38f-fe54-4bc2-b6fb-8eb7f2150811 (8/10/2015) http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-212fcda7-43a1-410e-9efd-843e52150805 (8/4/2015) http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-757b5ec1-e33d-4b71-8a69-39d8d2150805 (8/4/2015) http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-7afb31a6-1b6b-43dd-8c34-916b42150731 (7/31/2015) http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-3233bdc2-ee1a-4e57-a3f4-eeae52150725 (7/25/2015)
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I put TB in Safe Mode and the problem still exhibits.
I have AVG Free v2015.0.6125 I have email scanning turned off in an effort to stop TB from crashing constantly, which seemed to improve it for a while. (Not sure if improvement lasted at all.) (I never had this wrong-reply-address problem until I recently had to switch my primary email address and deleted the old account, made the new account the default account.)
I am using Windows 8.1 64-bit with Classic Shell and using that Firewall.
Thank you for your help! I finally updated my email with Mozilla so I will get notified of replies here and be more timely. Thank you.
Modified
You could try updating to 38.2. Your crashes all seem to relate to the same thing. And maybe a solution is implemented in this update.
Just to confirm that not any program outside TB is the source:
- Restart the operating system in safe mode with Networking. This loads only the very basics needed to start your computer while enabling an Internet connection. Click on your operating system for instructions on how to start in safe mode: Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, OSX
- If safe mode for the operating system fixes the issue, there's other software in your computer that's causing problems. Possibilities include but not limited to: AV scanning, virus/malware, background downloads such as program updates.
When you use Gmail to send messages, it usually silently replaces the from: address in your message by the Gmail address associated with the selected SMTP server. However you can add non-Gmail addresses to Gmail accounts.
Does each of your Gmail accounts have its own unique SMTP server set up? If not, sort this out now.
Account 9 appears to be a non-Gmail account, but it's set to use a Gmail SMTP server. If you haven't added the bandzoogle address to the relevant Gmail account, I'd expect all messages sent using this bandzoogle address to appear to the recipient as sent from the Gmail address of the associated SMTP server.
Admittedly, none of this deals with what address Thunderbird picks for you, but if the address you do choose is subsequently being changed then your attempts to control it will come to naught.
Modified
Some hangs/crashes/freezing can be related to graphics. So, in addition to checking that your graphics/video drivers are up to date, you could try disabling hardware acceleration in Thunderbird.
Tools|Options|Advanced|General and disable the hardware acceleration option.
This option is automatically disabled by Thunderbird's Safe Mode, so if you have still seen crashes when starting Thunderbird this way, it's almost certainly not relevant. Note that Gnospen was directing you to Windows' Safe Mode, not Thunderbird's Safe Mode and it's this second one that I want you to try. Look in your Start Menu for an option to start Thunderbird in Safe Mode, or hold down shift when clicking the Thunderbird link/icon/button.
@Zenos Thanks, I need your advice She already tried TB safe_mode. Her answer is after troubleshooting info. @Victoria-nola Sorry didn't see that you already updated to 38.2. Do you still get crashes?
Thank you Gnospen. Maybe it hasn't crashed altogether since upgrade to 38.2, but it hangs up constantly with message (Unresponsive). So if I open one email too quickly after closing another, it hangs up, sometimes for several minutes before it recovers. Or if I delete several emails. Or if I open a mailbox. Almost anything, typing one single key, can cause TB to hang up-- and I cannot find a given keystroke combination that makes it happen. Drives me nuts because of lost time and attention. I try very carefully not to type any keys in advance of readiness, but it still happens no matter how careful I am. This wasn't why I was asking for help this time, but it's a bothersome issue for me and one that needs to be sorted out if possible.
Zenos: Gmail is not replacing the bad unwanted reply address with my correct, default address because when those emails go out with the bad address they are never delivered to the Group (because the bad "from" address is not subscribed). It's been the lack of delivery of my posts that has made me realize they were misaddressed.
SMTP servers: I don't even use those email addresses. They simply are associated with a band site that I don't even check the emails for-- for sentimental reasons we can't seem to unplug the site even tho it barely even works. So I don't really care what they look like and since it's not the source of this problem of mis-addressing replies, I can't cope with trying to fix it right now. I appreciate the insight tho and will keep that in mind if I need to start using any of those emails.
Hardware acceleration is already disabled in TB and has been since I've been using it so unfortunately, that isn't a source of the crashing/hanging problem.
Do you know the best way to check for graphics/video drivers and updates?
Maybe I should just try reinstalling TB, but I've done so much customization that thought is a bit daunting. But the problem with the misaddressing is a major one for me because I am the administrator of the one Group that is my busiest group and it increases my work/time on the Group by a lot when I'm constantly readdressing and removing the spurious signature that it also adds when I readdress.
Although, if the problem persists in TB Safe Mode, is there any real hope the problem would be solved by a clean reinstall? I assume I can get a list of my TB add-ons to facilitate reinstall?
A clean reinstall is actually quite hard to do. All your settings are stored independently of the program itself. Reinstalling, with or without an uninstall simply replaces the program itself, and troubles like yours are usually connected to the user data, stored in the so-called profile.
The profile stores your messages, Address books, account settings, extensions and customizations, so it's quite daunting to consider deleting it. You can delete/uninstall/reinstall the Thunderbird program but I doubt there'd be any useful change. And since all your accounts use POP, these messages now exist only in your profile and you can't go back to the server for them as you could if you were using IMAP.
I've had mysterious failures myself where a shiny new profile seemed to be the only cure. In this case, you just have to resign yourself to adding all the accounts and doing the customization all over again, and a lot of tedious reimporting of previous messages from the old profile. The ImportExportTools add-on is useful for the importing part.
Read this to find out more about the profile:
Modified
Zenos: Thank you for the info. Don't have time/focus to make new profile right now but I'm sure the problem will drive me to doing it sometime soon. Something somewhere must have corrupted.
Question: The article tells me how to find, backup, restore, and move a profile, but it doesn't tell me how to delete and start new. Can you help me out with a very literal step-by-step on how to do?
Thank you, I'm very grateful for this forum and the help.
Zenos: I found out something. Gmail is replacing the email address just as you said it should be. I didn't understand what was going on because it's not changing the "From: Name" field. I kept reading that instead of looking at the actual address. Not sure why I don't receive distributions of those emails from Yahoo, but I don't. But it turns out others do, so the worst of the problem is now just that in those cases the wrong From name appears. I will have to redo my profile to fix, but we're in the process of moving so will have to wait. Thanks again for your help.