Multiple identities in one account with Apple Mail.app

Over the time I tend to accumulate mail adresses and accounts. Not so long ago, I decided to switch from a multiple mail accounts to a single imap account where I aggregated all others.

I used to be an Apple Mail.app user, but this switch caused me some troubles. How to specify different (legitimate) sender addresses with only one account configured ? I thought it was impossible and so decided to switch to Mozilla Thunderbird which allows you to set different sender addresses by account.

But recently, I found it was possible in Mail.app and here’s how :

In your account configuration, enter a comma-separated list of adresses in the “Email Address” field.

Then, you’ll be able to choose which sender address should be used when writing a new mail.

For those of you interested in my configuration, I operate a simple linux box with Postfix, Courier-Imapd and Maildrop. Then I use Fetchmail to grab mails from my different accounts and put them in my imap setup.

[Update]
Drew leave a comment about a solution to have different names for each addresses. It require you edit the preferences plist file : Mac OS X Mail app config – EmailDiscussions.com[…]