Multiple identities per e-mail account

You can tell Thunderbird to use more than one identity per mail account. This would be the case where you have a catch-all account for a domain or forward messages from another e-mail address. The instructions below assume that you have Thunderbird 0.7 or higher.

1. Go to your account settings.
2. Choose the account to which you wish to add additional identities.
3. Click the "Manage Identities..." button (on the lower right).
4. Click the "Add..." button and then add the necessary information for the additional identity for the account.
5. Repeat as necessary for additional identities.

When you write a new message, Thunderbird uses the default identity for the account you are working in. When you reply to a message, Thunderbird uses the identity that matches the address the message was originally sent to, if it can find a match in the account you are working in. Otherwise it uses the default identity.

You can select any identity from any of your accounts when replying, forwarding or composing a new message by selecting it in the From drop down list box. If desired, you can also create a unique signature, specify the draft folder, what folder your copy of the sent message should be stored in, and what reply-to address should be used for each identity.

Messages sent using mailing lists frequently don't specify what address the message was sent to in the To: or Cc: headers. It might be buried in one of the Received: headers, or in mailing list specific headers such Delivered-To: or Envelope-To: that Thunderbird has no knowledge of. In that case, Thunderbird doesn't know how to match the address the message was originally sent to and will typically select the default identity. If that happens you need to manually select the appropriate identity from the list box. If you use a separate folder for mail sent to each mailing list one workaround would be to use the Folder Account extension to specify what identity to use when a specific folder is selected.

Exceptions

The Gmail SMTP server will ignore whatever From: address you supply unless you add it in the Gmail web page at Setting -> Accounts -> "Add another email address".

Thunderbird 2 changed the behavior when replying to a sender, where the sender is one of your multiple identities. It used to reply to that identity, now it uses the default identity. According to this bug report its by design.

Folder specific settings

The Folder Account extension lets you select what account or identity will be used when composing, replying, or forwarding mail based on what folder is currently selected. It also lets you specify the default To: address when composing a message based on the currently selected folder. Right click on the folder and select properties in order to configure the account/identity and/or To: address.

You can still select a different identity from the From: drop down list box if you use this extension.

See Also

• Multiple SMTP servers (Thunderbird)
• Mail concepts
• Secondary accounts

External links

• The old way to add multiple identities by editing prefs.js

• The Correct identity extension may make it easier to choose an identity. It supports aliases.

• The Identity Reminder extension might be useful if you're worried that you will accidentally reply using the wrong email address.

• The Identity Select extension lets you select your identity from the Write button.

• The EditSender extension lets you change both the name and email address of the sender to whatever you want (on the fly) when composing a message. Right click on the From: line and select "edit sender details for this message" to edit it.

• The Virtual identity extension is another extension to modify the From: address on the fly while composing a message. Left click on the From: line to directly edit it.

• The Freeform From and FCC on Compose extension is the most well known of the extensions to modify your email address on the fly when composing a message. The author usually doesn't update their web site to mention the latest version number and that web site isn't always available.

• Bug report about identity selection in mailing lists