How to change the sender's name or e-mail address in mutt?

How can I change the sender's name or e-mail address (From: header) used by mutt?

Solution 1:

Normally, mutt sets the From: header based on the from configuration variable you set in ~/.muttrc:

set from="Fubar <foo@bar>"

If this is not set, mutt uses the EMAIL environment variable by default. In which case, you can get away with calling mutt like this on the command line (as opposed to how you showed it in your comment):

EMAIL="foo@bar" mutt -s '$MailSubject' -c "abc@def"

However, if you want to be able to edit the From: header while composing, you need to configure mutt to allow you to edit headers first. This involves adding the following line in your ~/.muttrc:

set edit_headers=yes

After that, next time you open up mutt and are composing an E-mail, your chosen text editor will pop up containing the headers as well, so you can edit them. This includes the From: header.

Solution 2:

If you just want to change it once, you can specify the 'from' header in command line, eg:

mutt -e 'my_hdr From:[email protected]'

my_hdr is mutt's command of providing custom header value.

One last word, don't be evil!

Solution 3:

before you send the email you can press <ESC> f (Escape followed by f) to change the From: Address.

Constraint: This only works if you use mutt in curses mode and do not wan't to script it or if you want to change the address permanent. Then the other solutions are way better!

Solution 4:

One special case for this is if you have used a construction like the following in your ~/.muttrc:

# Reset From email to default
send-hook . "my_hdr From: Real Name <[email protected]>"

This send-hook will override either of these:

mutt -e "set [email protected]"
mutt -e "my_hdr From: Other Name <[email protected]>"

Your emails will still go out with the header:

From: Real Name <[email protected]>

In this case, the only command line solution I've found is actually overriding the send-hook itself:

mutt -e "send-hook . \"my_hdr From: Other Name <[email protected]>\""

Solution 5:

For a one time change you can do this:

export EMAIL='[email protected]'; mutt -s "Elvis is dead" [email protected]