Adding a default Reply-to address in Mail.app
I had an email from a Hawk Wings reader today, asking how to do something that I am surprised to discover I’ve not posted about on Hawk Wings before.
Mail.app offers an optional field in the Compose window for specifying a different Reply-to email address:
This is fine if you only need to do it now and again. But it’s a pain if you want to do this regularly, because you need to enter the email address each time you compose an email.
(Now former?) Mail Team Developer Cricket has created an applescript which will add a form of this header to every email by default. It also lets you add a default bcc: address (useful for quietly copying your emails to Gmail perhaps).
Running the script presents you with a list of options:
Select the Reply-to one and a dialog appears into which you can enter your desired Reply-to address:
Cricket provides another script to undo the change later on if you want to.
The scripts are freeware, unsupported by Apple and available from Cricket’s web site 
.
A poster on macOSXHints provides some Terminal commands to add a Reply-to or Bcc: email address if you prefer to do things that way.
[Thanks for the prompt, John!]
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Tags: Apple Mail, applescript, Bcc, default reply-to address, GMAIL, mail.app, Terminal, tip
January 28th, 2007 at 2:24 am
a random aside related to the things-people-usually-know list: is there a script or basic rule to display all incoming mail as plain text and then click on the fly to present in html versions for single messages? i know how to prevent the app from displaying images, but i mean all of the mail…also, if so, could this be a rule applied to just one or more accounts versus all?
AND another quick question: i’m on this one listserv for a professional association and we have so many international members that we only allow for users to post to the list using plain text…sometimes i forget and my messages bounce…is there any kind of rule that could be applied to this one single email address to force any messages sent to it to be converted automatically to plain text (sorta related to that html/txt question above i suppose, thought that’s a stretch ;)
January 28th, 2007 at 2:33 am
“is there a … rule to display all incoming mail as plain text …?”
Issue the following command in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE
“… [how do I view] html versions for single messages?
IIRC, you can use this keyboard shortcut:
Command-Shift-T
January 28th, 2007 at 3:57 am
To change the imposed PreferPlainText view back into HTML use the View->Message->Next Alternative menu command or use the keyboard shortcut Command-].
To go back to plain text use the Previous Alternative menu command, or Command-[.
January 28th, 2007 at 5:04 am
Ah, yes, scratch that keyboard shortcut I gave. It’s actually the one for changing format for mail composition.
January 28th, 2007 at 7:39 am
I’ve run the script. It seems to make no difference to the headers when I’m writing a new mail in Mail.app. I’ve used the terminal commands. Again, no difference to Mail.app, apparently. Each time I’ve quit and restarted Mail. I’ve even restarted the machine (MacBook Pro running OS X 10.4.7 with Mail 2.1); no difference. I feel I must be missing something!
January 29th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Rather than having a script to do all this, in Mail – Pref’s – Accounts… for the e-mail address field, just put in all your addresses separated by a comma… this will give you a drop down menu on the compose window that has each of these addresses to select from. No script, no repetitive typing.
January 29th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Dave, that works well for the default reply address, but not so well for the Reply-to or Bcc addresses. At least not on mine.
January 29th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Dave’s suggestion makes no difference to the Reply-to or Bcc fields on my set-up.
It’s a pity the script doesn’t work for me. I Bcc all my emails to my Gmail address.
February 9th, 2007 at 6:26 am
The script works…with one catch. It applied the Reply-to to ALL of my mail accounts. I only need the Reply-to in one of my mail accounts. Example: I don’t want the same Reply-to in my School mail account as in my gmail account.
May 5th, 2007 at 2:13 am
That link to the Apple Script does not work. Are there alternatives?
May 12th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Hmmm… That link works fine for me.
August 5th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Here is a little challenge for anyone that i apple script savvy out there (as I ma not). I have been looking everywhere on the net to find a way to automatically bcc every email that goes out. This script listed above works for me. HOWEVER, this scripts applies it to ALL my accounts. If you are reading this and are tech savvy, would it be possible to tweak the script so that we are given the option of selecting which accounts this happens with?
This would be very, very helpful, much thanks in advance to whoever finds this out.
December 4th, 2007 at 8:25 am
The link to Cricket’s .mac page no longer works. You get an error message saying that the page does not exist. Is this available somewhere else?
Thanks
April 19th, 2010 at 6:15 am
It’s important to note that (as of Mail.app 4.2), adding a BCC UserHeader in this way overwrites any other BCCs you may have added manually to your email, and applies this to all accounts. Still looking for a better way to automatically BCC an email address on a per-account basis.
May 5th, 2010 at 3:18 am
i want to add an automatic bcc but only for emails sent from one of the (imap) accounts i have set up in mac mail. can i do this? hope you can help!