venta

It's that time of year again - the time when I discover that I cannot achieve that which my parents wish me to achieve with their computer. This is not as serious as last year (when a small omission with a jumper inexplicably toastered the entire thing). In fact it's not serious at all. It's just irritating. Any ideas ?

The parents wish to collect email from multiple email accounts. This is not a problem. I have set up an extra three accounts, each of which successfully sends and receives its own mail. So far, so good.

However, if an email comes in to one of the addresses, and you hit "reply", I would like the "From" address to be set to the right thing - that is, the address to which the email to which you're replying was sent.

I'm sure that, when I set this up on their previous computer, it all Just Worked. However, now it seems that when you reply to a mail it defaults to sending it from the account most recently added. Which, I might add, isn't even the default account. If I temporarily omit that account from the send-and-receive process, it defaults to the next most recently added. Which also isn't the default.

It is, of course, possible to select the desired account from the drop down From list. But that's an annoyance and something it's easy to forget to do.

I have mulled and puzzled through Outlook Express' many menus, and have failed to find anything which appears to relate to this. I had thought there was a checkbox relating to the address you used to reply, but if there is I simply can't find it. There is also a distressing lack of "just do the right thing, dammit" boxes.

I have tried: removing and re-adding the accounts, switching the default account around, and turning it off and back on again (both OE and the entire machine).

Interestingly (or not) the behaviour of replies to a specific email seems to relate to the state and settings at the time that email was received, not at the time of replying. Which is also a bit daft.

Does anyone have any advice to offer?