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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:

Return-Path: <info@rds.com>
Received: from svr1 (ec2-79-125-266-266.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com [79.125.266.266])
    by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id u14sm23273123gvf.17.2010.03.10.14.33.24
    (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5);
    Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:33:25 -0800 (PST)
Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=www.rds.com)
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--
Geoff
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Samuurai
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  • Your MIME headers got reformatted in your post, so I can't tell if there was a valid e-mail address in your Reply-To. If you CC'ed that e-mail to both a gmail account and a POP3 or IMAP, do other e-mail programs reply differently to the exact same message? – Ben Voigt Mar 10 '10 at 22:47
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    this would probably be better suited for superuser.com, however it seems to me like superuser is where questions go to die, so I don't blame you... – Adam Mar 10 '10 at 22:49
  • Same issue here, incompetent bug – MrPHP Feb 18 '19 at 00:09

3 Answers3

97

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

Geoff
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    How the hell did you know that obscure idiosyncrasy with Gmail? Well done mate, sorted it out. – Samuurai Mar 12 '10 at 19:56
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    One of the obscure things that my in-head Garbage Collection missed in the last cleanup :) – Geoff Aug 19 '10 at 20:12
  • I also had this issue, since I have added my non Gmail address as one of the from address in the Gmail. Gmail should not behave like this. This is more trouble than convenient. – Nish Feb 13 '15 at 13:15
  • See, that's stupid. John Doe contacts Jane Doe from my website. My website has pet breeders. If I use the email John entered as the from and send it from my website, it goes into spam. Therefore, it has to be an email from the same domain and requires a replyTo so when the breeder hits reply, it goes to John, not back to us. – Shawn Rebelo Sep 01 '15 at 21:35
  • CORRECT!! THANKS! So... Google isn't considering first to check if there's a different Reply-To address than the "from" address that isn't in the "Send As" list. – DavidTaubmann Apr 05 '16 at 19:33
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    The suggested workaround mentioned in that thread worked for me: Change you "from" email in your app to include a +. So if it's "test@email.com" change it to be "test+@email.com" – Kurt Jan 23 '18 at 04:13
1

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.

Simon_Weaver
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0

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.

rablentain
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  • Can you confirm this is still true for you? I am having this issue and have tested multiple times and it is only sending the replies to the "from" address for me... I actually started trying in hopes that this behavior would happen programmatically from Google, but doesn't seem to be the case for my GSuite account. – Drew Feb 07 '19 at 17:56