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Two gmail accounts managed in Thunderbird, reply to email sent from first ends up returning to the second

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  • Last reply by ramjr

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I have two gmail accounts I monitor in TB. Both use the same gmail SMTP server (smtp.gmail.com). Otherwise the two accounts are completely separate. The Reply-To field is empty in both.

When I send an email from account A and the recipient responds, the reply frequently shows up in account B. The sent folder in account A shows the email with the proper account A sender address. But the reply in the account B inbox shows the account B address as the sender.

This does not happen when sending from account B, so far as I've seen.

One thing I did notice in the last case is that the response that arrived in account B came from a person in the CC list, not the To list.

I am currently working with recipients to try and figure out where the address gets changed.

But if anyone has seen something like this and there is already a solution, I'd like to know ;)

Bob

I have two gmail accounts I monitor in TB. Both use the same gmail SMTP server (smtp.gmail.com). Otherwise the two accounts are completely separate. The Reply-To field is empty in both. When I send an email from account A and the recipient responds, the reply frequently shows up in account B. The sent folder in account A shows the email with the proper account A sender address. But the reply in the account B inbox shows the account B address as the sender. This does not happen when sending from account B, so far as I've seen. One thing I did notice in the last case is that the response that arrived in account B came from a person in the CC list, not the To list. I am currently working with recipients to try and figure out where the address gets changed. But if anyone has seen something like this and there is already a solution, I'd like to know ;) Bob

Chosen solution

You can't fix it by just changing settings in Edit SMTP Server. Account Settings, Outgoing Server (SMTP), create 2 gmail smtp servers, then select each account in the left pane of Account Settings and point to the correct server in the smtp drop-down. Instructions are in the link in my first reply.

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All Replies (4)

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You should have separate gmail smtp servers that are identical except for the User Name (and Description), and set each account to send on the matching smtp. Otherwise, as you find, gmail automatically switches the sending account.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1350593

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Thank you sfhowes. You got me looking in the right direction but unfortunately it did not solve the problem.

I failed to mention in the original post that I'm using TB 115.7.0 (64-bit).

When I go to settings, I see the two accounts with different email addresses, which short circuited my analysis.

Your response got me to looking at the "Edit SMTP server ..." selection. And, for account B, I found the user name listed was that for account A. So I changed the user name and set the description to be unique for account B.

Returning to account A and checking the server info, I found that both the description and the user name for account B had "propagated" to account A. So I changed account A to a unique description and the correct user name, returned to account B and found the account B info had been changed to that for account A.

At least for this version of TB, it seems that the critical item is the server name and that TB only allows one instance. At least for things as I have them currently set.

Any thoughts on what to do now?

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Chosen Solution

You can't fix it by just changing settings in Edit SMTP Server. Account Settings, Outgoing Server (SMTP), create 2 gmail smtp servers, then select each account in the left pane of Account Settings and point to the correct server in the smtp drop-down. Instructions are in the link in my first reply.

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Thank you for the clarification. It was not clear to me where I should go based on your first response. The second supplied that needed info and I have adjusted things as you suggested.

This seems to have solved the prolem.