I maintain a bunch of email accounts that I use for different purposes...nice concept, but I consistently forget about it when I initiate a conversation, so my default account from Mail > Prefs > Composing > Send new messages from: often gets used when I'd prefer to have used a different account.

So, what I"m hoping for is a plugin for Mail.app that will add an "Ask" pop-up as an option under ... > Send new messages from:

I've never seen anything like it listed on MacUpdate, and a search of the ~500 Mail apps in the App Store was equally short on results.

Has anybody ever run across such a critter?

Thanks.

(Feature request filed with Apple)

I haven not seen anything like this, but I have run across elsewhere many people complaining that the correct "Send from" account is not being used on their replies. I suspect that if what you are looking for existed, one of these people would have mentioned it.

Thanks, Ira, but that's not an analogous situation, because the account from which replies are sent is system, rather than user, controlled; it's a bug, not merely a shortcoming.

I'm not especially hopeful about finding a 3rd party solution, but perhaps Apple will favor my feature request; it's not at all unreasonable, and the option would be helpful to many users.

Now, of course, I'll have to watch my replies to see from which account they're being sent.

Apple recently added this feature actually!

Open mail, open preferences, select Accounts
Select the email account with the aliases available in it
under the first tab (account information) look at "email address"

Normally that's an edit field you put in a single address into, and that's what it will put in the "FROM" header. Now it's a POPUP. and you can "Edit email addresses" to add more than one entry.

After you add an alias, close prefs and create a new email
the From popup usually just has one entry for each account you've set up in preferences. NOW it has one entry for every email address you've added to every account.

it doesn't let you edit the From address on-the-fly when creating a new email, but if you only have a few standard aliases it's easy to add them and select the one you want to use at the time you compose an email.

Slowly overcoming this bout of bookmark-phobia...

Thanks, but you misunderstood my post, which surprises me, because you once posted that you maintain different email accounts for different purposes so you can tell from where your spam is coming by the email address to which it's been sent, and that's similarly purposed to the multiple account setup I use.

My problem is that my newly typed emails are sent from my default "From" account, which is very often not the one I'd have preferred to use, so I'd like an option to see a "Which account do you want to send this from" pop-up when I initiate a new email; it's a space-case scenario, yeah, but I doubt that I"m alone in it.

The option you pointed out is a nice one to have learned about, and I'll definitely make good use of it, but it's miles from the one for which I"m looking.

I guess I still don't understand then, you're asking for a popup and it's giving you a drop-down right there? That drop-down will NOT be displayed unless you have at least two enabled email accounts configured.

OK, visual clarification...

What I'm looking for is a way to add an "Ask" option to the top image, so instead of a newly begun email appearing as it does in the middle image it will appear as it does in the bottom image (or some-such).

so like THIS?

http://imgur.com/a/7A0ZE

still not seeing your problem....

or did you want it to force you to make a selection, instead of offering a selection with one of them being the default?

My problem is that I need to be reminded that I've got multiple accounts to choose from when I initiate a new email, so either the menu's opening automatically - either option - or a "Do you really want to use this [default] account?" pop-up when I initiate one would turn the trick.

With all the accounts you've got, it seems like something you'd find helpful, too, or are you totally on top of the situation?

Oh, no, I've been known to send from the wrong address from time to time. Or from the wrong server. Fortunately Mail.App has gotten pretty intelligent about who to use when I click Reply. I just have to be a little careful when composing something from scratch. I have my default set, and only need to change it when I have a specific REASON to send via some other method. So that kind of serves as its own reminder, as I'm already doing something different.

But I can see where a "always ask me" might be a nice option. Keep in mind you're using an uncommonly-used feature, AND you're wanting to use THAT in an UNCOMMON way also. That's like "uncommon-squared", and will naturally land you very near the bottom of their TO-DO list.

Yeah...