![Diane Poremsky [Outlook MVP]](http://www.outlook-tips.net/images/2014/MVP_BlueOnly.png)
If you have two (or more) email accounts collecting email and always want to send replies using the default account, Outlook always uses the receiving account when you reply. You can select the correct sending account when you reply, but it's easy to forget to do this.
Is there a better way?
Yes, provided you never want to send messages using the second account, you can edit the second account's SMTP information to use the default account's SMTP and set your preferred email address as the Reply to Address.
Outlook 2010 and 2013: open the Account settings dialog from the File, Account settings dialog and double click on the account you want to edit.
Outlook 2007: Tools, Account Settings dialog and double click on the account you want to edit.
Outlook 2002 and 2003: Open the secondary account using Tools, Email Accounts, Change existing accounts…. select the account and click Change. On the first screen, you can enter your preferred email address in the From Address field.
Enter the preferred SMTP (sending server) in the Outgoing mail server field.
Click More Settings Button
On the General Tab, enter your default email address in the Reply email field. This insures replies come to the default email account.
On the Outgoing Server tab, select Log on using button an enter the default account's log on information.
Ok your way back to the Accounts dialog and Finish the dialog.
Older version: The steps are similar. Choose Tools, Accounts or Tools, Services to access the accounts dialog.
Published January 15, 2011. Last reviewed on June 9, 2016.
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23 Comments on "How to always reply using a different email account"
This is a junk answer without the caveat that you MUST be using a POP or IMAP account. If you use exchange or other corporate email this will NOT work.
Since POP3 or IMAP are the only account types that use SMTP, it should be a given that it won't work for corporate Exchange accounts.
If you have send as permission on the Exchange address, you can type the address in the from field to send from it. If address is a secondary address on your own exchange mailbox, you can only send using that account using SMTP, if pop3 or imap access is enabled for your account - set it up as imap using the steps in this article.
This is just brilliant! Works like a charm. Thanks.
Will this way use the correct Display Name and Signature as well? This would be the key point for many of us I presume since replaying under a different account is almost pointless unless it appears like it came from that account, Display Name, Signature and all. Anyone know before I experiment?
You'll want to put the desired name and address in the name and address field at the top of the screen. The username and password on the bottom of the page is for the incoming server, set the username and password for the outgoing server in More Settings > Outgoing server.
Signatures are assigned to the account - make sure you assign the correct signature.
Perfect, this is exactly what I needed. One question though: Why do you need to set the "Reply E-mail" field, when it is the same as the "E-mail address" in "User Information", which becomes the default "From" field? It seems to be unnecessary as far as I can tell. Won't e-mail clients reply to the "From" field anyway in absence of a "reply-to"?
The reply to field is used for the account that you want the replies to be sent to, which 99% of the time is From address... so yes, its redundant and not really necessary regardless of the situation.