Using multiple identities on one e-mail account in RoundCube

The Problem: You receive mail from multiple sources in one account. For example, you may receive mail for me@example.com, accounting@example.com and personal@mydomain.net, all in one account. Your “real” account is me@example.com.

When you create a new e-mail, you want it to appear to come from one of the three addresses, but it always says it comes from me@example.com, even if this is an accounting issue. The solution is to create multiple identities.

In RoundCube, let’s add an accounting@example.com identity.

1. Click Settings (top right, next to Logout)
2. Click Identities Tab (third tab).
   1. You will see me@example.com. It probably does not have a signature or anything, but you can click on that to edit it.
   2. Once you are through editing it, click the Save button
3. Click the plus sign in lower left to add an identity
4. Fill in the name, e-mail address, etc… you want to go by.
   1. Display Name is the name you will see on the dropdown, and it is also the name which will be prepended to your e-mail address when you use this account. Let’s say something like Example Widgets Accounting here.
   2. Email is the e-mail account you want things to appear to come from. Enter accounting@example.com here.
   3. Organization. You don’t have to fill this in, but if you want, you can put your company name. Let’s put Example Widgets, Inc. here.
   4. Reply-To is another optional value. If you don’t enter anything, it will default to the same as Email, but let’s make sure, so enter accounting@example.com here.
   5. Bcc is only used if you want a copy of everything you send from this alias to also go to another account. Normally, this is left alone, but in this case, let’s pretend we want a copy to go to headaccountantant@example.com
   6. Set default is used if you want this to be the default identity to be used when sending a new e-mail. We don’t want that, so leave it unchecked.
   7. Click the Signature tab (if you want) and enter some information to be placed at the bottom of all e-mails sent from this identity. For example, you may want to put your name, address and phone number. You can choose to enter it using HTML, in which case you can bold, underline, or even change the font color.
5. Click the Save button

If you want to add another identity for personal@mydomain.net, simply click the plus sign to add a new identity. You can edit these at any time, and you can have as many identities as you want.

Now, when you create a new e-mail in RoundCube, the from address will be a dropdown which you can use to select which identity you want to use (it will default to whichever one you have set as default).

If you receive an e-mail addressed to accounting@example.com and hit the reply button, the identity accounting@example.com will automatically be chosen.

Note:The Filter function (Settings | Account | Mail Filter) can work off the To field. If you have multiple identities, you can tell the mail server to automatically put your personal mail in a “Personal” folder, your Accounting mail in an Accounting folder, and your regular mail in your Inbox. But, be  warned; this is done by the mail server itself, so you must tell mail clients other than RoundCube to check for new messages in those folders in addition to the Inbox, or you may not get a visual indicator when you have a new message.

Note: Most mail programs have the ability to create multiple identities, and they all use similar layouts. Thunderbird, Outlook, Mac Mail and Android’s K-9 all have the ability to do the same thing you just did in RoundCube. However, each one must be set up separately; it is not a function of the mail server, but a function of the mail reader.