Working with multiple email accounts in Outlook–sending from a single account

Do you have multiple email accounts in Outlook 2010 and find you are sending out email from multiple addresses when you only want to send email from one account?

For example I have 2 accounts in Outlook, my personal email account (Cameron Dwyer) and also CustomerService@scinaptic.com.

If I reply to an email that arrives in the CustomerService account it will default to sending it from CustomerService.

I have to remember to change the sending account from CustomerService to Cameron Dwyer (Microsoft Exchange).

Rather than having to always remember this and double check which account I’m sending from, I have setup email signatures to help remind me.

To manage signatures, compose a new email and select Insert | Signatures | Signatures… from the ribbon

Now create a ‘warning’ signature that you will use as a visual reminder that you are sending from the account that you really don’t want to be sending from. In my case I have created a signature called ‘CustomerService Warning’ and created a bold message that I shouldn’t miss.

Now for the important part. In the top right of this dialog change the Email Account to ‘CustomerService’ and choose to use the warning signature for both New Messages and Replies/Forwards.

For your normal user account, ensure you specify your standard email signature.

Now we have everything in place.

If you open an email from the CustomerService account and try to reply/forward it you should see the following.

Changing the account in the From dropdown to you personal account automatically removes the warning signature and inserts your standard signature

This works well for HTML based email. I have noticed that Outlook will not insert the signature if you try to forward/reply to an email that is in plain-text format.