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We are using CiviMail, but I'm a bit confused on the purpose of the FROM field when sending mailings. We have about four different email addresses set up in the CiviMail From Email Addresses screen, all with the same domain for different administrators. However, no matter which FROM address is used, all the sent mail uses the same mailbox for sending. So when we look at our sent items folder, even if we used a different email address in the FROM field, it still uses the default mailbox.

Is it not possible to use the mailbox associated with the FROM address when sending mail using CiviMail? Or will it always use the mailbox that is specified in the Outbound Mail screen, no matter which FROM address is specified?

EDIT:

Just for clarity, in our Outbound Mail Settings we have selected SMTP not mail(). Not sure if this makes any difference.

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is it not possible to use the mailbox associated with the FROM address when sending mail using CiviMail?

It is possible to send email using different from email address. The expected behaviour is that the email address you choose when composing a CiviMail is the email address that appears to the recipient in their email client.

It sounds to me like your SMTP service is rewriting the from address before sending the mail. That might be because the SMTP credentials you have supplied are only to be used to send email from that specific email account (in which case, it is not particularly well suited for use as a CiviMail mailer).

You might want to check with the email provider to see if that is the case. Or run a test using a different mailer in 'Settings - Outbound Mail' (e.g. 'Mail', or 'Redirect to database') and see what the From addresses look like when sent using these methods.

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  • thanks for your advice. I will try with the different mailer settings and see what happens. I am still a bit confused though. We are using Gmail for the SMTP login, and for the username field this takes an email address, so I am wondering if it will always use this address as the sender? We were also hoping to make it possible that as well as the From address changing when sending mail, that the sent mail items would also be stored in the sent email folder associated with the From address, but it looks like this is not intended behaviour.
    – Ben
    Commented Feb 15, 2018 at 9:19
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    CiviMail wasn't designed to be used with a gmail account to do the sending, which is why you are experiencing these problems. It also wasn't designed to store outbound email in the Sent items of a typical mail client. My advice would be to look into a mail service (e.g. Sparkpost or Amazon SES) that is designed for the job. You could also look at bccing all CiviMail to an archive account if this is important to you.
    – michaelmcandrew
    Commented Feb 15, 2018 at 10:13
  • Thanks very much for your comment, that makes it much clearer!
    – Ben
    Commented Feb 16, 2018 at 10:36
  • @Ben - you might be interested in themak's q+a here: civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/22808/…. He has more experience setting up gsuite with civicrm and might have a better answer to part / if not all of your question.
    – michaelmcandrew
    Commented Feb 20, 2018 at 16:35
  • Many thanks for the link. That looks very interesting. For the time being we switched to using mail(), which is sending with the correct from and reply address. The only drawback is no sent emails are being stored in any outbox which is a shame as this is useful for checking from an administrative point of view. I know it is still possible to check the activity on the contacts that the emails were sent to. I also thought there was another drawback to using mail(), as I heard it might have repercussions on possibly being blacklisted for using a different server to the actual mail server.
    – Ben
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 8:48

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