Why is Outlook sending email using the wrong account?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

Okay, so riddle me this! I've read all the comments and they are all similar to my problem, however, I've found an interesting link to my problem, but not yet the solution. I use 4 different accounts on Outlook XP/2002. I have my default address that I use for most things. And I have it set to reply/forward with whatever account the original message was sent. Here's the weird part. If I type an email address into the To field (rather than picking it from my address book), the email works as it should, sending from the default account. However, if I choose the address from the address book (or type in the person's name so that Outlook automatically looks for the email address), Outlook will use another email account, despite me telling it to use the default. So, there is something screwy going on with Outlook upon accessing my address book (contact list). The even weirder part is that the sent messages show having been sent with the wrong account (at least when I open up the sent message - I have the From field on my list of items to see in the outbox, but that is blank!!), but if I log onto that account directly (gmail in this case) the messages never show up as being sent via that account. As far as I can tell, I have all the accounts in Outlook set up appropriately and all the right checkboxes selected (otherwise I would just fix them, right?). Any ideas???

Hi Leo,
I'm having the same problem with Outlook 2003, although I've isolated it to a specific situation. First, I have 4 email accounts through the same ISP, one of which is the default account. All 4 are set up identically (other than the email address, obviously), and all 4 pass the "test account settings" with no problems.

Here's what I've isolated: if I type the recipient's email address out completely (or use the Autocomplete to pick from recently used addresses), everything works fine. However, if I do an Address Book lookup, it will *not* use the default account, but one of the other three. Of course, if I pick the "unwanted" address from the "accounts" drop-down, it will pick a different address. If I pick any other account from the drop-down list, it tells me that it will be sent using that account, then promptly ignores it.

If I delete all accounts but two (and use the address book lookup), it will always pick the non-default account.

Another message board said this was fixed with Office SP 2. In fact, on my previous machine (running XP Pro SP 2), I had SP 2 installed and everything was fine. But when I copied my PST file to my new Vista Home Premium PC, installed Office 2003 from scratch and brought it up to date with Office SP 3, it's been broken.

I tried to install SP 2 afterwards, but of course it wouldn't let me, and you can't uninstall Service Packs in Office without doing a complete uninstall/reinstall. That's what I'm looking at now, unless you have any better ideas.

Sigh....

I have a related problem - also very frustrating. I am using Outlook 2003 and have 3 email accounts. I am tryinbg to set up an automatic signature for each one - the problem is it will only apply the signature on the default account and not on the others...can you help? Thx!

i keep getting a log in box coming up, i have not changed anything, i am suing streamnet web site and they are forwarding all my email to me know, but this keeps coming up

There was a problem logging onto your mail server. Your Password was rejected. Account: 'mail.#############, Server: 'mail.###########, Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR Authentication failed.', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800CCC92

I have a similar issue with Outlook 2003, where, let's say for example, I receive an e-mail on my engineering business e-mail account. I hit 'reply' and Outlook is composing and sending on one of my personal accounts, or vica-versa, where I am responding to a personal e-mail on a personal account, and Outlook responds using the business account. It's very messy and really mixes things up. Plus there's some times when you're in a political debate with a bunch of folks with cc'd mailing lists, and you don't want your company e-mail in there, but Outlook will slip you up. 49 out of 50 times, I remember to manually set the sending account, but that 1 time in 50, I forget to check and it makes quite a mess of things.

How can we set up Outlook so it will reply using the e-mail account that the replied-to mail was sent to?

Using Outlook 2003, I have two of the accounts I have set up showing in my Folders List, I set up 5 accounts, how can I see them all? The two I see are hotmail and ATT but all 3 yahoo accounts are hidden somewhere.. and I am running YPops.

Thanks Leo,
Frankly I think this is a bug. I had it in Office 2003, and now it appears in Office 2007 as well.
I have various POP accounts (Business/hobby) and they have exactly the same account settings. They all work.
In some cases a mail sent to my work account, when I create a reply, Outlook already selects the hobby account. It says in the draft "This message will be sent through ". So the error is made at the moment of reply, in my case it is not made while actually sending it.

Found it (for my problem at least)!
Here is how to reproduce:
create two pop accounts a@work.com and b@hobby.com. Both domains refer to the same email mail box. So both accounts in Outlook read from the same mail box. The first accounts wipes the box, so there are no more mails to read for the second. The reason to set it up this way, is that it allows me to send emails from either a@work.com or a@hobby.com.
Now for reasons not important here, I sometimes want to keep the messages in the pop box. It means both account read from it, with the result that I have the message twice in my inbox. Both messages appear to be identical, both are address to the same account (say a@work.com), but one is read by the work account and one by the hobby account. If I now reply the message that is ended up in my mailbox by the hobby account, Outlook puts in a@hobby.com instead of a@work.com, even though the messages was send to a@work.com.
The work around for this bug is to use Tools, Options, Mail Setup, press Send/Receive, select All Accounts, press Edit. Then remove the checkbox of "Receive mail items" of all but the first pop account. In this way, I never get more than one copy of the email, even when it is left on the server

I have 3 pop emails and I'm trying to migrate them all to my default account. I know that with any email that comes through I can manually choose my default account to reply from. However, I don't always remember to do this. Can I make it so Outlook AUTOMATICALLY replies from my default account, even when the Email was originally directed to one of the other ones? Basically any email that I receive and reply to from any of the 3 accounts, replies from default?

Thanks in advance!

Hi... Does anyone know of a plug in which would prompt you to select the 'send from account' before sending the email?
Thx

To post a comment on "Why is Outlook sending email using the wrong account?", please return to that article's main page.