Replying to e-mail using Mac Mail

[iau]

Hi,

I have a problem replying to an e-mail where the persons e-mail name consists of a comma between last and first name. Mac Mail sometimes treats it as two addresses. It manage to add the @... to the first name and include the correct e-mail address, while the last name (appearing first) results in an error since it's not a valid e-mail address.

I can't find where I chose separator for multiple e-mail addresses, if I want to change it to a semi colon (, for instance. Anyone know what I should do? Adding the e-mail address to the address book doesn't seem to help.

Thanks in advance.
- iau

 

[4np]

Comma's are not allowed in Email Addresses (see RFC 2822).

According to 3.4.1 of the specification:

An addr-spec is a specific Internet identifier that contains a
locally interpreted string followed by the at-sign character ("@",
ASCII value 64) followed by an Internet domain. The locally
interpreted string is either a quoted-string or a dot-atom. If the
string can be represented as a dot-atom (that is, it contains no
characters other than atext characters or "." surrounded by atext
characters), then the dot-atom form SHOULD be used and the
quoted-string form SHOULD NOT be used. Comments and folding white
space SHOULD NOT be used around the "@" in the addr-spec.

addr-spec = local-part "@" domain
local-part = dot-atom / quoted-string / obs-local-part

and:

atext = ALPHA / DIGIT / ; Any character except controls,
"!" / "#" / ; SP, and specials.
"$" / "%" / ; Used for atoms
"&" / "'" /
"*" / "+" /
"-" / "/" /
"=" / "?" /
"^" / "_" /
"`" / "{" /
"|" / "}" /
"~"

atom = [CFWS] 1*atext [CFWS]
dot-atom = [CFWS] dot-atom-text [CFWS]
dot-atom-text = 1*atext *("." 1*atext)

Both atom and dot-atom are interpreted as a single unit, comprised of
the string of characters that make it up. Semantically, the optional
comments and FWS surrounding the rest of the characters are not part
of the atom; the atom is only the run of atext characters in an atom,
or the atext and "." characters in a dot-atom.

Hence, a comma is not allowed in an email address... So I guess you mean the name/description of the email address? Like this

"My name, is bla" <bla@mydomain.com> ?

If it's entered in your address book like that, it shouldn't be a problem. But if you type it in your TO, CC or BCC address fields in Mail they indeed will get seperated into email addresses. That's because the comma is the seperation between email addresses. So either add people with comma's in their name to address book and use those entries, or -when you type the addresses in mail yourself- don't use comma's....

ps. according to the specification you are allowed to create odd email addresses like ~@domain.com and `@domain.com (and it works, I've tried it .

 

[iau]

Thanks for your fast reply!

Yes, I meant the name/description of the e-mail address. In my address book first and last name is entered separately. I list first name before last name, but some of my contacts (mainly work addresses) have last name listed first in the name/description when I receive the emails.

Should this cause a problem? It doesn't seem to happen every time - not even with the same person. This confuses me a little.

Thanks again!
-iau