Total Pro Hosting

It ain't GoDaddy, but it's just as generic looking
and we won't clutter our pages with the junk that you won't know how to use anyway.

Home • Support • Contact

Outlook 2003 - How to Send "On Behalf Of"

If you want to send a message and have it "appear" to be from someone else, then you can send a message "on behalf of" another user. This is most common when a single company/person runs multiple domains/businesses/websites but only maintains a single email account and they want to send an email message "from" that other domain, or business, or person. Possibly a secratary sending a meeting request "on behalf" of the boss? But, it won't be fully "hidden" from where you're actually sending it from.

So, don't think you're getting tricky and think you can all of a sudden "Spam" on behalf of... as Outlook has a little built in feature to make it "almost" transparent. I'll get to that in a minute.

Outlook Express does not support this feature, as far as I know.

1. Open a new message, and ensure you have the "From Field" enabled.

2. Fill in the email address you want to send "From" in the "From" field. You can even select someone in your contacts, or it will even "autofill" just as it would if you were typing in the "To" field. Then, type your message as normal.

NOTE: The message will still be sent using the regular means of transport, which is SMTP for most of us and using whichever email account you have specified (or just the default if you only have one account in your system.) This is also important for spamming purposes (More on that later.)

3. SEND YOUR MESSAGE.

4. The recipient receives his message. Wow, I just got an email from Bill Gates!!! At least that's what's showing in the recipients Inbox.

Not so fast!

Look at the message itself, a little closer...

5. Notice that the real "From" states "Blake Miller [blakemiller@earthlink.net] on behalf of billgates@microsoft.com" This is the first "spam protection" that is built in. It is obviously clear on who "sent" the message.

NOTE: If you were to pull the Internet Headers as well, and inspect them, it would also reveal who the sender was... but that's saved for us geeky types.

6. However, it's still good, because if the recipient hits a "Reply" then the message will go back to the intended "From" person, not the person who actually sent/prepared the message. This works well, say if the secretary is sending a question / request on behalf of the boss... if the recipient responds, then it will go directly back to the boss, not the secretary.