Mail identity is the name and email address used in your email correspondence. Your account may be configured so that you can create multiple mail identities with different addresses. Having multiple mail identities can help you manage different roles in your job and personal life from one account, and if you set up your email account to retrieve email from your other POP accounts, you can set up mail identities to reply to those messages using the corresponding POP address.
Each identity can be set up with a name that displays in the From: header, an email address, a default signature, and specific preferences for replying to and forwarding email messages. You can also specify a mail identity for messages sent from specific folders.
When you send new email, reply to, or forward an email message, one identity is always associated with the email. Your account is set up with a default mail identity. This identity is always used unless you set up new mail identities. If you have more than one identity, when you open a new compose window, your identities are listed in a drop down in the header. Before you compose your email, you select the identity to use for sending your message.
Mail identities are configured from the Options Mail Identities tab.
Open Options and select the Mail Identities tab.
In the Identities pane on the left, click Add.
The Identity
name field in the right pane displays a default name, New
Identity. Replace
this name with your descriptive name for this identity.
Configure the three tabs as follows.
On the Identity Options tab:
In the When I send a message with this identity section, configure the name and address for this identity. In the Send From: type the "friendly name" that should appear in the From field of your outgoing email messages, for example: john. In the second box, select the email address to send messages from. Your account configuration, may let you create an address. If there is no pull down mark in the address field, you can enter any address, in the format of name@example.com
(Optional) Check Set reply-to, if replies should be sent to a name and address different from that which you configured in Send from. Enter the name and address that should receive replies for this identity. For example, replies to training messages John sends should be sent to Team Training at training@example.com.
If you want messages sent to you at a specific address to always use this mail identity, check Replying to a message sent to and type your addresses that should use this mail identity for replies. Type a comma or semi-colon to separate addresses on the line. For example, if all mail addressed to name@example.com should always be replied to using this mail identity, type name@example.com in the text box.
If you want messages in specific folders to automatically use this mail identity, check Replying to a message in folder(s). Click the folder icon to select from a list of existing folders or click New to create a new folder. The folder name is displayed in the text box. Type a comma or semi-colon to separate folders listed in the box.
Go to the Signature tab to create a signature that will appear automatically in mail sent from this identity.
Select to place the signature either after your message or after all included messages in the email.
Type your signature as it should appear in the body of the email message.
If you want the signature to automatically be added to your messages, check Add signature to all outgoing messages automatically. Note: if you do not check this box, You can click Add signature on the toolbar of the compose pane, to add the signature.
Go to the Advanced tab, if you want to configure a format different from the default identity format for messages you reply to or forward.
Reply/Forward format - Choose either to compose using the same format as the original received message, plain text, or HTML.
Prefix - If you chose to include original text in your reply and forwarded messages, specify whether to prefix each line of the text with > of |.
When replying - Select whether to include the original text in the body of your reply message. You can choose to include original text, not include it, include it in the body with a prefix that you choose, or include only the most recent message. (In other words, it will quote only what was written by the person who sent the message, and not previous text.)
When forwarding - Specify how to include the original text of a message when you forward a message, in the body of the message, in the body with a prefix, or as an attachment.
Click Save, to save the mail identity.