I am using Outlook 2003 and have multiple email accounts. Most accounts are at the same hosting company but are on different servers.

It appears that Outlook chooses a random account/smtp server to send all outgoing email. This is wreaking havoc with my SPF setup.

Example:

A - smtp server=smtp1.yyy.com
B - smtp server=smtp1.zzz.com

A is the default email account in outlook. When I send an email from A it often gets sent through B's smtp server. Thus showing up as "Not Verified" based on the SPF record.

What I want to do is to make email from A go through A's smtp server and B's email to go through its smtp server. Outlook doesn't seem to let this happen. Is there anyway to force email to be sent through the same smtp server every time?

You should be able to just assign the same SMTP server to all of your accounts, so all mail, regardless of account, goes out from that server.

If the smtp server requires authentication/authorization, you can enter your username and password so that you can send e-mail from other accounts, but authenticate against the SMTP server with the credentials it is expecting.

The one yo set as default should be the one it uses to send mail, double check one is set as default.

cordelli I do have a default email server setup, but it is not always the one that emails are sent through. It appears to be random which one sends the outgoing email.

SEA_Tigger I could do what you suggest, but other servers that check the SPF info would tag the email as not being verified and potentially be rejected. I could include all servers/domains in the SPF info but even then some servers are very strict with SPF and reject the message.

BTW, we are talking 6 seperate email accounts/servers.

I wish Evolution ran under Win XP.

Would it be rude to advise you switch to Mozilla Thunderbird? It can do multiple accounts with their own SMTP server just fine.

I've never gone back to Outlook.

No, that isn't rude. It is probably the 'right' answer.

I have gigbytes of Outlook PST files, use the calendar capability with clients, sync with my Nokia, and have $ invested in Qurb and some other tools.

I was hoping I'm just doing something wrong, but maybe this is just a quirk with Outlook.

Well, when I said I never went back, I wasn't totally honest, I use Outlook to sync my phone and PDA(s).

I imported 7Gb of PST's into Mozilla and ended up with a Mozilla mailstore of just 2Gb (shows how inefficient Microsoft is).

As for Qurb; the spam filter in Thunderbird is awesome, I have not seen a single piece of spam for 4 months now.

I wasn't totally honest either. I also must use PGP with one of my clients and I don't think Thunderbird support it yet.

http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

UAVirgin - That is very strange behavior - I use Outlook 2003 myself and have around 14 accounts setup - as long as I pick the right account when I am sending email from it does end up using the correct SMTP server - of course its different issue that my SMTP authentication is different for the different accounts.

I am sure you have already done so - but I would advise you double check the settings - hopefully it doesnt need a re-install though.

When choosing which account to use to send the outgoing email, instead of being "random", I wonder if Outlook selects the account that received the email originally?

That is the way Outlook works for me. You can change it by clicking on the "Accounts" button on the menu of your current email you are writing.

That is true for "reply" and "forward"

But for "New" emails it should use the default account.

It does, but you can always override it using the Accounts drop-down.

Hmmm. When I imported abou 10 gig of pst files, they took up more space with Thunderbird. I wonder why its so efficient for you, and inefficient for me. I do have lots of enclosures (word, ppt., pdf., excel, etc.) that make the email archives so large.