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How do I configure Google Gmail to have a different sender?

I know you can setup Google's Gmail service so that when you send mail it appears to be from an account other than your Gmail account, but I don't know how to do that. What I want is to be able to use Gmail from the road and send messages that look like they're from my office, not a public service. A tutorial would be greatly appreciated.

Dave's Answer:

The more I dig into Gmail, the more I'm impressed with its capabilities, actually. Heck, I can even just go to the regular Gmail page on my WAP-enabled cellphone and navigate through my messages to see what's new. Very cool.

What you're talking about involves just a few clicks on Gmail once you're logged in. Start by clicking on "Settings" on the top right of your Gmail page:

Now you'll see all the different Gmail settings:

Click on "Accounts" and you'll be in the right place. It's the "Send mail as" block:

Click on "Add Another Email Address" and you'll get a pop-up window that lets you specify a new name and address (the name part is particularly nice if you go by, say, "Nicholas" at work and "Nick" with your friends):

With this two-field configuration, mail you send from Gmail will look like it's from whatever address you specify, but when people reply, they'll be replying to your Gmail address. If you'd prefer that they reply to your regular mailbox (what we mail geeks call the "Reply-To:" field), you'll want to click on "Specify a different reply-to address" and you can then specify the email address you want to have their response sent to.

Add that or not, click on "Next Step" and you'll then have a chance to verify that you really own that address and are able to use it as your masquerade address:

Click on "Send Verification" and a few seconds later you'll get a message asking you to confirm that you really want to use that address in Gmail:

You have requested to add taylor -at- intuitive.com to your Gmail account. Confirmation code: 9354038

Before you can send mail from taylor -at- intuitive.com using your Gmail account (d1taylor -at- gmail.com), please click the link below to confirm your request:

https://mail.google.com/mail/f-4bc6450b-taylor%40-intuitive.com-fe130d09b6ac34

So, finally, you'll be able to verify your desired configuration change by going back to Gmail's Settings area, where it now shows:

Click on "verify" and you can enter your verification code (or, of course, you could always just click on the link in the message sent in the first place. Either way):

That's all there is to it. Now, when you compose a new message you will have the option of the two different From addresses, rather than just the Gmail address:

Gmail: Compose: Choose from multiple From Addresses

Hope that helps you get Gmail configured for your liking.

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Categorized: Computer and Internet Basics (Article 7005)
Tagged: gmail, google gmail, web mail
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Comments

Hello Dave,

Good Stuff, I did actually know this, but it was of little relevance to me, as I use mail.app and have my GMail and other e-mail boxes configured into it. However it got me thinking and I realised that this could actually solve my eternal SMTP-problem. Seen as I change network quite frequently between home and uni, then country to country etc etc. I found myself constantly having to change the smtp-servers used to send mail from various e-mail addresses.

Of course up to now, I had been able to use the GMail smtp server in conjunction with my other accounts, but the sender address would change to my Gmail one. And looking up the smtp-servers for whichever network I was didn't prove very meaningful.

Well, it seems, that once the other mailboxes addresses have been verified in Gmail (note. without needing to configure Gmail to fetch the mails from these mailboxes) you can send mail from mail.app using the Gmail smtp-server and it will show up as the address you wished it to look it was sent from.

This pretty much solves my global smtp-problem and I can use the Gmail smtp on all my mailboxes, in no matter what network I may be in.

I have only tried this out indeed with mail.app, but go ahead, knock yourselves out, and try it with Thunderbird, Outlook or whatever mail client rocks your boat !

Posted by: Manu Raivio at November 29, 2006 4:35 PM

Here's one caveat about using "another sender" in gmail.
When youraccount@gmail.com sends email to someone as myotheremail@mydomain.com - gmail inserts a special header: "Return-Path: " into your email.
So anyone can easily determine who was the primary sender of this email.
And second (and worse) part of it - is that some companies's email systems will see discrepancy in "Return-Path" and "From" headers and will mark your email as "spam" - and will not deliver it to the destination. It happened to me a few times. I found government and large corporate departments seems to be using some sort of anti-spam software that gets tricked by this.
Just something to keep in mind!

Gleb Esman

Posted by: Gleb Esman at December 5, 2006 9:28 PM

There's also Google Apps for Domain, if you own the domain involved. The free service runs your mail server and provides you with an smtp server. I've been using it for a few months and so far it works great, although there's been false positives with spam identification.

Posted by: Chui Tey at December 7, 2006 3:42 AM

Dave! Love the GMAIL sender address article and will gladly buy you a chai...any ideas on this:

I've set up my sender address as default in gmail but it does not show as sender when using Outlook as my imap client. It shows ericblz@gmail.com in the inbox of recipient. When they hit reply it does show Eric@blases.org (correct). I think it's getting the blases.org from Outlook vs gmail setting for reply address. I want it to show in their inbox to avoid confusion.

THANKS!! Keep up the great work.

Posted by: Eric Blase at December 18, 2007 12:58 PM

wow.. great!!

thanks a lot

Posted by: ondries at March 27, 2008 6:24 AM

yea, what Gleb said. that Return-Path header almost got me fired.

Posted by: Matt Montg at August 28, 2008 10:00 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!