MySpace may be launching a new email service, but Google never stops adding new features to Gmail, even since the service has finally left “beta” status. The most recent addition to Gmail is the ability to send mail from different addresses without the inclusion of “on behalf of” in the From line.
This is a feature that has evidently been highly requested by users. To utilize it, users need to go to the Accounts page under Settings and click “edit info” from the “Send mail as” section. After that, just choose the option to “Use your other mail provider’s SMTP servers.”
The following images illustrate the difference between the feature being off and on:
“Quite a few of you use Gmail’s custom “From:” to send messages with one of your other email addresses listed in place of your Gmail address,” says Software Engineer Emmanuel Pellereau on the Gmail Blog. “Since these messages are sent by Gmail’s servers but ‘from’ a non-Gmail address, we have to include your original Gmail username in the ‘Sender’ field of the message header to comply with mail delivery protocols and help prevent your mail from being marked as spam.”
“Most email programs just display the ‘From’ address and not the ‘Sender’ field, but some (including versions of Microsoft Outlook) show these messages as coming ‘From username@gmail.com On Behalf Of customaddress@mydomain.com’ which really annoyed people,” adds Pellereau.
The old way of doing things is still being kept as an option because as Google points out, there are cases where other addresses might not have a server that you can use. More information on the “send mail as” feature can be found here at this help center.
