Become a and go ad-free! Email addresses and names We have to start by understanding how email addresses and names are used. When an email is addressed there are two parts:. The actual email address, which is not optional, that specifies the actual recipient of the email. There’s also what’s called a “display name”, which is meant to be the human readable equivalent of name of that recipient. This part’s actually optional.
Sep 14, 2016 - View Full Headers in Outlook 2016 for Mac. Right-click (or ctrl-click) the message in your Inbox or other folder (do not open the message). From the menu that appears, select View Source.
It’s perfectly valid to send email with only an email address. So where does the display name come from? When you configure your email account in your email program, or when you set up your email account with an online service, you actually specify both your name and your email address: In some cases you may be given an email address, but you still specify your name.
Then when you send email, your email program puts those two together. It uses your name, and then typically follows that with your email address in angle brackets as the “from” line in the email that you send: Ask Leo! Example Account So in an outgoing email, you define what shows up in the From: line simply by how you’ve configured your email account. The display name is actually completely ignored by the entire email system. It has nothing to do with getting your email from point A to point B; it’s just there kind of as a courtesy for the humans to be able to recognize an email sender or recipient without needing to know the specific email address. Display names and address books If you send someone email and they then add you to their contact list or address book, both the name and the email address are added. Sometimes email programs will even do this for you – adding the address book entry automatically.
There’s nothing that says the email address actually has to match the name. When you send an email to someone that’s in your contact list, the email program typically does the same thing, kind of. It gets the email address, of course, from the contact list, and it also fetches the name that’s associated with that email address. It then formats the “To:” or the “Cc:” or the “:” line with the display name followed by the email address in angle brackets. Now you may not always see this, because sometimes email programs will hide what they’re doing and show you only the display name.
But here’s the key: since the display name is completely ignored by the email system, there’s nothing that says the email address actually has to match the name. You could go into your address book and change the name of one of your contacts to be “Santa Claus”, and that’s what would show as the display name when you send email to that email address. This is true for most email programs, although the specifics of how you actually make this happen can vary a little bit. Your friend’s address book So one very strong possibility is that the friend who’s sending you email has you in his email address book with the wrong name. He needs to change his address book entry or perhaps clear his email program’s suggestions or auto-complete entries. Now, how did you end up in his address book with the wrong name?
It’s really hard to say, but I’ve got one hunch:. Spammers fake the “From:” line all the time and in doing so, they typically mismatch the email addresses and the names. Look at your spam sometimes and you’ll see that the “From:” lines rarely have names that seem to match their email addresses. So here’s my theory: your friend got some spam. That spam looked like it came from your email address, but with a different name. You had nothing to do with it; it was just spam. For one reason or another, your friend’s email program remembered it, either automatically adding it to his contact list or some kind of auto-complete or auto-suggestion list.
And he (or she) is the one that will need to clean it out. You have control over what recipients see in the 'from' field when they receive email from you. But the 'to' field when you're receiving a message?. Computers use email addresses to route email. Angle brackets are used when a more human-readable name is also included. Simply emailing your entire contact list with a notice that you've changed your email address is NOT the way to change your email address. This is all about the many ways your computer tries to make your life easier.
Sometimes it tries just a little too hard. The solution is fairly simple, but may be in one of several places. Posted: June 5, 2014 in: Shortlink: TAGS:,. I started running into this problem recently and just never really sat down to think how annoying it was until I tried to find a solution.
The problem is that my kid’s school has a general email account to send to. Anything you want, to ask how your kid is doing or to tell them that your kid is going to be sick. Within the last few months, when I type in their email address from gmail’s webpage I get some random person’s name.
Someone I’ve never met or contacted but Google+ is telling me that the school’s email address is assigned to this person. I tried multiple things today to try and un-attach this person from my kid’s school but gmail won’t let me because it’s a Google+ feature.
One that I didn’t ask to be turned on and one that I can’t turn off. So now when I email my kid’s school I get some random guys name as to who it’s going to and now when the school emails me to remind me of holidays or calls me to pick up my kid, I get this random guy’s name on my phone. I wish there was a way to turn this feature off or at least correct it but from the random things I’ve found there is no fix. If anyone knows the problem I’m talking about and how to fix it, that would be great.
There is a solution which it worked for me. The bug its there in your Gmail contacts Open your gmail account on top of the search bar type the email id which you get the other user name. When you type you will find that the email id was correct but the name appears others. Click enter Under the search bar you will find the name which is a google+ and at the end of the name you can find a small arrow pointed downwards click on it Edit contact details You will be redirected to Google contacts just change the unknown name to your name or delete the email or delete the contact and save changes. Well I faced something new today, email was correct but display name was wrong.
I checked with the recipient and everything was fine at his end. So I had to see what was wrong at my end.
Simple but effective solution: Enter email address in a new email – right click on the email address after entering the email address in the ‘to’ field. – Open outlook properties – Change display name – Hit okay – Send a test email to the same recipient.Unless you send a test email the changes would not take place. Leo, I see one important misapprehension in your article.
You point out quite correctly, that the entire e-mail system outside of our own provider takes no notice of the “display name”, and the party at the other end can attach any display name they want, to an email they send in reply. IMPORTANT POINT THOUGH: necessarily my own mail service holds my contact list and of course my own e-mail address, and includes the display name that I TOLD THEM TO use. Therefore my server is totally capable of looking at the received email address, looking at my addr and contacts, and appending the display name that I GAVE THEM in the first place. So ALL our mail SERVERS ARE FAILING to tell me who that email is from, using the display name I gave them.
Currently we see this causes users everywhere confusion and can easily result in our sending replies etc to the wrong people because we didn’t check the underlying real email; do we remember which is Joe Blow’s correct current un-spammed email? Leo, can you help with a groundswell to beat on all the email providers to fix this obvious (though ignored) bug? THANK YOU, John.
An email I wrote went to the recipients bearing my email address, but with a completely different friend’s name as the sender. Everything I wrote at that point bore my email address but my friend Kathy’s name.
After investigation, I found that her email, too, was suddenly going out in my name. I looked at my gmail account and found her name was in my name box. She found my name was in her account’s name box at her end. We each changed our account names back to the original correct ones, and changed our passwords. The problem was corrected. The whole thing took place within an hour from start to finish.
I could not imagine why it happened, except that perhaps our accounts were hacked and this was a prank. Is that the likely explanation? Should I be looking for more damage? My mail box was clean and no problems.
Now I get email that is addressed to another name. No one I know. Does not appear to be anyone on my friends list. It is fake advertisements that looks real clearly wanting you to click on it and lead to trouble.
There is writing in foreign language and the time it arrives in box is not correct. It may be AM here and the mail shows PM. I have tried to block but the same keeps appearing in other names.
Is this my problem also. What about the foreign language and time.? Before commenting please:. Read the article. Comments indicating you've not read the article will be removed.
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