(neo)mutt: Reply to email from the adress the original message was sent to (auto-adjust sender / from-address)?

Question

I am a longtime mutt user (actually switched to neomutt) some time ago and there is one thing I never quite managed to configure to my liking:

I have several accounts that I map to several folders. I adjust my IMAP/SMTP credentials as well as mailboxes etc. via folder and account hooks. Since I also use sidebar, I can easily switch from one mail account to the next. I also adjust the 'From:' header via a folder hook, such that when sending an email, my name and email are chosen automatically to match the account I am sending from. If I want to reply to an email that was send to account A from account B, I usually copy/move the message from folder/server A to folder/server B, switch folders/accounts (letting those hooks do their thing) and reply from there. That is a bit cumbersome but happens rare enough so I do not really care.

However, I also happen to have two accounts/mailboxes that receive mail sent to several email-adresses (think [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]). I can send email from all of those by manually adjusting the 'From:' field when composing an email. However, I would like this to happen automatically when replying to an email: If I reply to an email that was sent to [email protected], I do not want to reply from [email protected], even though this might be my preferred default configured via the my-domain folder/account hooks.

This answer suggests set reverse_name=yes to do just that (if I understood correctly) but adding that to my .neomuttrc didn't have the desired effect. I suspected the hook setting From: might override that setting and commented it out for testing, but now I simply compose/reply from my-local-user@hostname.

I am aware of but not interested in mutt-vid since it is way overkill for my simple needs: I am fine with manually setting my sender's address when starting a new email thread (in case I am not happy with the default configured through my hooks). So there is no need to learn the most likely most appopriate sender's address based on the recipient and past interaction. I just don't want have to remember to manually change my sender's address if I reply to an email I receive via a non-default address.

Answer 1

The way to do this is to enable the use_envelope_from option. If envelope_from_address is unset, neomutt will derive the sender from the From: header.

Just add the following to your config file:

unset envelope_from_address
set use_envelope_from

Answer 2

I also receive emails at multiple addresses (I create a new one for each online organisation I have to create an account with). Setting the reverse_name option works as expected for me – but that’s because I have the alternate addresses configured with a regular expression which matches all my email addresses – and I haven’t started using hooks (yet):

# When replying to an email, use the To: address of the original email as the
# From: address in the reply (requires that the To: address be recognised by
# Mutt as being one of my alternate addresses).
set reverse_name

# Let Mutt know what other email addresses are used by me.
alternates ^[email protected]$ @example
# I had been thinking of writing a script to dynamically create a file of
# alternative addresses from /etc/aliases but there’s no need to list them
# individually as – currently – all example.ie and example.info addresses
# are me so it is enough to just match the `@example` regular expression.

You might find it useful to also use the edit_headers option which allows the From address to be set manually in your text editor when composing a message:

# When composing a message, edit the headers along with the message body.
# This should make it easier to see that the correct From address is being used
# and to fix this if necessary.
set edit_headers