Using different "from" e-mail addresses in Outlook 2003 - Identiti

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Even though we can define multiple e-mail addresses for users in Exchange
2003, Outlook 2003 seems to provide nothing similar to Outlook Express'
"identities" feature to let us actually send messages using different
addresses.

This appears to be a glaring hole in the functionality of Outlook 2003.
Our users won't tolerate using 2 mailboxes and 2 profiles to achieve what was
simple with OE. Am I incorrect in believing that Outlook 2003 and Exchange
2003 do not provide any easy / fast / simple method of sending from any one
of their valid e-mail addresses?
 
Matthew said:
Even though we can define multiple e-mail addresses for users in Exchange
2003, Outlook 2003 seems to provide nothing similar to Outlook Express'
"identities" feature to let us actually send messages using different
addresses.

This appears to be a glaring hole in the functionality of Outlook 2003.
Our users won't tolerate using 2 mailboxes and 2 profiles to achieve what was
simple with OE. Am I incorrect in believing that Outlook 2003 and Exchange
2003 do not provide any easy / fast / simple method of sending from any one
of their valid e-mail addresses?
Click to expand...

No you are not. If you have more than one email account set up in
Outlook, in the Compose Window there is a button next to "Send" marked
"Accounts". You can select the email account you want to send the
message from, there.

HTH
 
This is true only if you are using multiple "accounts" which is not the same
as mutiple e-mail addresses. We use Outlook with Exchange and not with POP
connectors. So there's 1 "account" to send from, even though there are
multiple valid e-mail addresses associated with the account. This seems to
be where Outlook fails in that it gives us the option to choose the account
but no option to choose the address from which the mail is being sent.

If we try to select a user account from the "from" field, then we end up
with a message from the default smtp address for the user sent "on behalf of"
the address from which we actually want the message to be sent.

The user's default SMTP address is the only one that Outlook gives us.
We'd consider using multiple POP connectors running against the server but
this creates a multitude of issues including authentication problems when the
user is not in the office (outbound issues, not inbound). Been struggling
with this problem for a month and thus far have not found any suitable
solution.

The intent is to be able to use RPC over HTTP for easy access to Exchange
from any Internet connection (lot's of traveling going on) and minimize the
hoops through which the users have to jump in order to switch their identity
when sending mail. This does not appear to be possible when using only
Outlook / Exchange.
 
Matthew said:
This is true only if you are using multiple "accounts" which is not the same
as mutiple e-mail addresses. We use Outlook with Exchange and not with POP
connectors. So there's 1 "account" to send from, even though there are
multiple valid e-mail addresses associated with the account. This seems to
be where Outlook fails in that it gives us the option to choose the account
but no option to choose the address from which the mail is being sent.
Click to expand...

Surely you can set up more than one account in Outlook, even if those
accounts point to the same Exchange server?

If we try to select a user account from the "from" field, then we end up
with a message from the default smtp address for the user sent "on behalf of"
the address from which we actually want the message to be sent.

The user's default SMTP address is the only one that Outlook gives us.
Click to expand...

SMTP server is irrelevant. I use three accounts in Outlook, all with
different email addresses but all using the same SMTP server.

We'd consider using multiple POP connectors running against the server but
this creates a multitude of issues including authentication problems when the
user is not in the office (outbound issues, not inbound). Been struggling
with this problem for a month and thus far have not found any suitable
solution.

The intent is to be able to use RPC over HTTP for easy access to Exchange
from any Internet connection (lot's of traveling going on) and minimize the
hoops through which the users have to jump in order to switch their identity
when sending mail. This does not appear to be possible when using only
Outlook / Exchange.
Click to expand...

Seems to me that the problem is inherently down to having multi-email
addresses for your users. I have to say that in 15 years of Systems
Accounting I haven't come across that scenario. Why do you do it? it
strikes me that you are unneccesarily complicating matters.
 
Outlook does not now 2 Exchange connectors in one profile. Keep in mind
that we are not connecting to Exchange via POP connectors, we are using the
native Exchange connector. Even so, what would be the point of adding 2
connectors for the same AD / Exchange account? Exchange isn't seperating
the e-mail address by account, it allows multiple addresses for each account.
Adding more accounts to AD and Exchange also means we need more licenses, 2
per user, or we switch to the less attactive per device mode licensing model
(might be doable but not ideal).

But since Outlook won't connect to both accounts at the same time, and since
the users do not want to exit Outlook and go back into it again under a
different profile, there wouldn't be much value in having 2 AD/Exchange
accounts in order to use 2 different e-mail addresses. Mind you, it was
like pulling teeth to get the users to use passwords. Having them do double
duty switching Outlook profiles to use their multiple e-mail accounts would
meet with a rather large amount of resistance I would bet. This from the
folks who write the checks to boot.

As far as SMTP is concerned, you only need trying to use a POP connector
against an Exchange server from a foreign network, most often without the use
of VPN, to see that using POP3/SMTP to connect to Exchange creates a new
group of issues, not the least of which is that some ISPs now block outbound
SMTP unless you use their servers, so the user gets to switch their outbound
servers whenever they travel from the office to home and back again. We can
have Exchange listen on additional ports to avoid being blocked by the ISP
but we still have a multitude of authentication issues when connecting to SBS
from a "foreign" subnet if we are trying to prevent spamming on the server.

To add to the fun, the users really want to be able to travel just about
anywhere and connect to the Internet and send and receive mail. This would
typically preclude the use of VPN due to conflicts with the myriad private
network address setups and / or issues with PPTP / IPSEC not being passed
through the host network firewalls. We can avoid a lot of this with proper
internal addressing and procedures but there's no way we can control whether
or not a hotel network uses the same subnet as our office and / or whether or
not the firewall allows VPN passthrough so ultimately VPN is not an ideal
solution, at least as it's currently implemented.

But POP3 really won't work for the client as they want the full feature set
of Outlook / Exchange for shared calendars, etc., so they really aren't going
to be able to live with an all POP3/SMTP type setup to get access to multiple
e-mail identities for the users with the dual IDs.

This is where RPC over HTTP becomes really attractive as the host system's
IP address isn't important and unless they happen to block HTTPS traffic (not
likely), we should be able to connect from just about anywhere and not have
the user change a thing. But we come back full circle to Outlook not giving
the user a way to change from which e-mail address the user can send their
messages. The reason they need / want to do this is very simple: they have
2 e-mail identities to support the fact that they are working for 2 different
companies (it's as much a marketing thing as anything else, really).

In 19+ years of IT work, I've also not seen many Outlook / Exchange users
using 2+ mail addresses, but in this case that's exactly what is going on.
So my original declaration appears to be true. Guess it's time to take it up
with the Microsoft folks to get them to enhance the Outlook client to provide
some method of better supporting accounts with multiple e-mail addresses.
 
Matthew said:
In 19+ years of IT work, I've also not seen many Outlook / Exchange users
using 2+ mail addresses,
Click to expand...

maybe that's the issue that needs to be addressed - WHY do they use more
than one address? What's the point?
 
maybe that's the issue that needs to be addressed - WHY do
they use more than one address? What's the point?
Click to expand...

Picking up on this thread here as I am looking for an answer
to this as well. I would like to be able to use Outlook as
my main email client at home - no Exchange Server or anything
like that, just one POP3 server and one SMTP server so just
one account.

However that POP3 server receives email for <anything>@mydomain
which means that for security and to trace spam, etc, I tend to
sign up to mailing lists, forums, shopping sites, etc with new
email addresses for each: eg, amazon@mydomain or usenet@mydomain
and this also helps with filtering.

All the emails come to the same POP3 mailbox.

Now - certain mailing lists require that when I send a post to
them via email, it has to have the correct from: address. So I
need to be able to quickly and easily change the from: header
on specific emails.

I can't create a new account for each of these (even though I
could physically as they would all collect from the same POP3
server and only one need to be set to check automatically) as I
would end up with well over 100 different accounts.

I currently use The Bat! and have the facility to just overtype
in the from: field on each email, or to set default from: and
reply to: addresses for each folder. If I try changing the from:
address in Outlook then I get this silly "sent on behalf of" my
real email address....and often I want the real email address
hidden and only show the relevant one.

I hope all that makes sense, because this is stopping me from
being able to use Outlook - I really like the calendar and the
tasks facility and it sync's nicely with my handheld.
 
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