GMail appearing to ignore Reply-To

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2421234

19-09-2019
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Question

I'm using a gmail account to send emails from my website. I'm using the same account to pick up emails which are generated by the contact facility on my site.

I'm using the Reply-To field to attempt to make it easier to hit reply and easily get back to people.

The message comes up with the 'from' address and ignores the 'reply-to' address.

Here's my header:

by aquacouture with esmtp (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from <info@rds.com>)
id 1NpUSx-0001dK-JM
for info@rds.com; Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:33:23 +0000
User-Agent: CodeIgniter
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:33:23 +0000
From: "New Inquiry" <info@rds.com>
Reply-To: "Beren" <me@gmail.com>
To: info@rds.com
Subject: =?utf-8?Q?Test?=
X-Sender: info@rds.com
X-Mailer: CodeIgniter
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
Message-ID: <4b981e3390391@rds.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="B_ALT_4b981e3390ccd"

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
Your email application may not support this format.

--B_ALT_4b981e3390ccd
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

test


--B_ALT_4b981e3390ccd
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

test

--B_ALT_4b981e3390ccd--

Solution

Take a look at this thread; I think it answers your question. One of the later posts reads:

If the "From" address is either the same as the "To" address, or is configured in GMail Settings as one of the 'Send As...' accounts, Gmail replies to the "To" address instead of the "Reply-To" address. An easy workaround is to specify a non-Gmail "From" address

OTHER TIPS

EDIT: This doesn't actually appear to work when I programatically send mail. Still investigating if theres a way to get it to work with this

There is a feature in gmail itself to allow you to change the reply to address.

I can't figure out a way to dynamically change the reply to address, but here's how you can do it if you need to send email from several addresses (such as shipping, orders, feedback) but have it reply to a separate account.

Here's how I have it set it up.

Email address ($50/year) :

 automated@example.com          (I use this account to send from in code)
 customerservice@example.com    (customer service logs into this account)

Aliases (free) :

 shipping@example.com
 mark@example.com
 orders@example.com
 feedback@example.com

All these aliases are configured to send mail to automated@example.com and they are put into labels there via filter rules.

I send out from shipping, orders, feedback but want any replies to come to customerservice.

Here's how I set it up :

Log into gmail as automated - must be logged in directly as the user you're sending from
Click the accounts tab
Add each alias you want to send from with the Add another email address you own feature
Log in to customerservice and approve all the requests that should have been sent to each alias.
Log back in as automated and click edit info next to each email
Here you can click Specify a different "reply-to" address and enter customerservice@example.com as the reply to address.

I have slightly more complex reasons that I won't go into here why I have things set up like this - but if you want to change the 'reply-to' address this is the only way I've found to do it. Aliases allow you to send from multiple addresses and set reply-to to whatever you want. unfortunately though I cannot find a way to do this in code but it may work for some people.

Since this was the top result when googling the issue with Reply-To I leave a note here (even though the question is old):

I had this problem and I thought that I had set the headers right, which I had...

When I looked at the mail in Gmail the sender was set to the From-mail even though I had set the Reply-To to another mail. It took me a couple of hours before I actually tried to hit the reply button in Gmail and I realised that it actually worked as intended. Even though the From mail seems to be the sender in Gmails interface, the Reply-To mail is set when hitting the reply button.

I just want to notify about this, since it was not obvious to me at first.

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