GMail appearing to ignore Reply-To.

Question

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: <[email protected]>
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 <[email protected]>)
id 1NpUSx-0001dK-JM
for [email protected]; Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:33:23 +0000
User-Agent: CodeIgniter
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:33:23 +0000
From: "New Inquiry" <[email protected]>
Reply-To: "Beren" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: =?utf-8?Q?Test?=
X-Sender: [email protected]
X-Mailer: CodeIgniter
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
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--

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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) :

 [email protected]          (I use this account to send from in code)
 [email protected]    (customer service logs into this account)

Aliases (free) :

 [email protected]
 [email protected]
 [email protected]
 [email protected]

All these aliases are configured to send mail to [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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.