Outlook – Including sender email address when forwarding emails with Outlook 2007

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When forwarding an email in Outlook (I have 2007), the header of the previous email shows. Sometimes it may show as follows:

From: Joe Shmoe 
Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2010 10:01 PM
To: Roee Adler
Subject: Following our previous conversation

Other times it will include the actual email address of the sender of the previous mail:

From: Sponge Bob [mailto:sponge@bob.com] 
Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2010 2:26 PM
To: Roee Adler
Subject: Sponges and other stuff

How do I force every forwarded email to include the mail address? When forwarding from my iPhone it constantly keeps the address just the way I want it, but from Outlook it seems to depend on whether the sender is a contact of mine or not. The reason I need this is for 37signals' Highrise CRM system.

Best Answer

This has bugged me for years so I decided I'd find out if it's possible. I believe Outlook checks if the user name is in your Contacts, and if it is substitutes the display name of the contact. Ideally there would be a way to turn this off but there doesn't seem to be.

This question provides some difficult to use workarounds for Outlook 2003. It doesn't seem that Outlook 2007 has changed at all in this respect.

A solution using VBA:

Copy this simple VBA procedure into an Outlook VBA project :

Sub ChangeSenderName(itm As MailItem)

    itm.SentOnBehalfOfName = "Joe TextsTooMuch"
    itm.Save

End Sub

Now create an Outlook rule that checks for incoming emails from 0123456789@mms.att.net. I suggest using the condition called 'with specific words in the sender's address'.

Then for the rule action, select 'run a script'. Set the value to the script called ChangeSenderName.

Once you have saved and enabled this rule, any incoming email that matches the sender address will be passed to the VBA code, which will modify it.

Notes on this solution

This code is actually modifying a field called SentOnBehalfOfName. As a result, it only appears to take effect in the Outlook Message View - not when you open up an individual email. I looked into changing the actual sender field, but it is not able to be modified with VBA.

Alternative solutions

Of course, the most elegant way to do this would be to configure the service that is sending the emails, but I am assuming you have no control over that.

Another option is to configure the mail server which receives the emails, to modify the From header before it delivers to your copy of Outlook.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Outlook: How to display Sender Email Address in Inbox

Outlook – How get Outlook 2010 to display a name instead of an email address for mail I receive

A solution using VBA:

Notes on this solution

Alternative solutions

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