This comes down to how your email provider operates "alias" email accounts. They may be overridng whatever "from:" address you choose to use, in which case you may need to find an alternative provider.

Thanks v much

Katy

Well thank you, I didn't think I'd said anything of any great help! ;-)

I take it you have set up the alias in outlook/hotmail, via the website? They appear to prefer that to opening new accounts, so all well and good.

As far as Thunderbird is concerned, it would probably treat the alias as a separate email address and could be set up as a separate account. But reading the Outlook.com help, it appears to me that you would then get duplicates of messages in both Inboxes. So the alias (i.e. an additional identity on the same account) in Thunderbird may be the better way to do it. It appears that if you want to separate messages sent to your two addresses, you'll need to use filters to do it. You can do this, I think, in either Thunderbird or on the outlook.com server, via its webpage.

I suspect that for Thunderbird you'll need to set up the new alias address with its own SMTP "account", so that the alias address will be used to send the message and therefore will appear as the "From:" address in messages you send using it.

Tools|Account Settings

Go to the last item in the list of accounts, "Outgoing Server (SMTP)", select it, and add a new "account" here using the credentials of your alias address. Then in the main hotmail account, under Manage Identities|Settings→Outgoing server, select this new SMTP server for sending.

Thanks v much. But does this method mean I would have to do this bit

Then in the main hotmail account, under Manage Identities|Settings→Outgoing server, select this new SMTP server for sending.

...each time I wanted to send from the alias email? Oh gosh. That would be too much work to be honest, as I am continually swapping between the main and alias emails when I send emails...

No, no. Just do it once, to configure the new alias account.

Then when you send from the alias address it uses the alias smtp setting, and for the normal hotmail address, it uses whatever you are already using.

If I understand correctly, messages addressed to the alias will appear in the original hotmail account inbox. If this suits you, then all well and good. If not, you might want to set up filters to move messages addressed to your alias address to their own folders. I think you can do this either in Thunderbird or at the hotmail website.

Thunderbird should reply or forward by using the address the original message was sent to. This clearly isn't a perfect mechanism, as users often complain about accidentally using a private address when they wanted a business address, or vice versa. Putting messages into separate folders, according to which identity they connect to, might help.

Thanks, Zeno. I really appreciate your help. I'm a bit overwhelmed by your response (very much an IT novice) so need to print it out and work it out. But thanks

Was nice meeting you

K

Ps if you are still there - could you bear to give me advice on how to set up a fliter for the alias email on Thunderbird? I'm going to give it one go...

Here is an article about filters.

http://en.flossmanuals.net/thunderbird/filters/

In your case, I'd try this.

Create some folders in Thunderbird for your alias address. These could be alongside or under you main Inbox, or somewhere else such as the Local Folders account. Select a folder, right click and choose "New Folder" or "New Subfolder". Give it a meaningful name, avoiding characters such as slashes, question marks, brackets and braces.

Wait for a message addressed to your alias address to arrive, or open an old one. Send one from yourself if necessary.

When it arrives, open it. Look for the "to" address in the panel above the message body. It should have a star by it, either yellow or grey. Right-click, and choose "Create filter from".

This will open the create message filter dialogue, with the first bit filled in with your alias email address. You need to give your filter a name, at the top, and in the lower half, set what you want it to do with the message. In this case we need to tell it to move the message to one of the new folders you just made. It offers a browse window where you can seek and select the required folder.

Thanks very much, Zenos, for this and all your help

bw

katy