I’ve recently been asked to come up with a solution whereby multiple email alias’ get forwarded directly to a single email address. i.e. info@mydomain.com & me@mydomain.com both redirect to me@my-home-email.com. This I know how to do, however…
They want a way to distinguish (maybe in the subject) which email address it came from for house-keeping sakes. Obviously it shows when they read the email where it was sent from, but they would prefer a quicker/easier way to identify.
Does anyone have any ideas how this could be done?
I’ve had a look around the hosting packages forwarding options, and looked at gmail for forwarding though neither seem to do anything along those lines. Not sure whether something like Outlook or similar has such functionality?
The only way I can think of doing this easily is that you pipe both email addresses to a script, which takes the email, decodes it completely, re-writes the subject line, and re-sends it. The other choice is you write a mail handler for your mail server (if you’ve that level of access) that processes just those two email addresses and does the re-write for you before continuing to process the email.
Based on it being 123-reg I’d say you’ll be unlikely to be able to do either of those things I’m afraid, as they tend to be fairly basic cookie cutter web hosting for simple sites/tasks. Still worth asking just in case though, if you can pipe email to a script.
Forwarding email from one account to another, dependant on the solution you should still be able to set rules on the ‘recipient’ ok - emails can be FOR one user, but delivered to another.
This is how I have my server set up, when a mail gets forwarded it leaves the original recipient in tact. I can then scan and filter on the ‘delivered to’ (which is nearly always the same) or the ‘recepient’ (which varies dependant on alias).
All the email forwarding I have ever set up still has the original TO address in the header so that you can still tell which of the email addresses it was sent to even though all that address did was to forward it to another.
Why not try a test. Set up a test email forwarder to forward emails to another email address. Then try sending an email to that forwarder and see what TO address shows in the email when it reaches the address it is forwarded to.
If your web host provides Cpanel for you: install forwarder.
All emails on the forwarded email will be shown as if they were sent to the original answer.
That might depend on the email client you are using.
I used and tested that on Thunderbird. Everything works great. No additional scripts needed.
I think a couple of you have missed the point, the OP notes that when they click the email they can see who it was originally sent to - but they want it to appear in the subject line, so it’s easier to see at a quick glance who it was originally sent to
Of course if they aren’t bothered with using folders, then you could just set a rule up that checks the To: header and moves it to the appropriate folder.
Karl - you’ve got it right; that’s what I am/was aiming for.
Still not heard anything from 123-reg yet - I’ve never had a great relationship with them, but have been playing around with the filter options as suggested.
It could be a feasible solution to have a folder for each email alias (info, contact etc) and whenever an email comes to one of those it can be directed straight into the appropriate folder.
Thanks for everyone’s input, I’ll let you know what 123-reg say when I hear back!
Ah, Surely you could set a rule up in Outlook (or whatever) to modify the subject rather than move the email’s folder then? I know that can’t be done with a “normal” email forwarding setup and I don’t know anyone else that would want to do it like that so I can see why its not a common option.
I have my email program set to display the subjects in different colours depending on which email address the email was sent to. Far more effective than trying to modify anything in te email itself.
It is something that should be done at the client end anyway - however you decide you want to do it. Its not really up to the server to add / modify / flag emails it fowards.
