Replying to "Sent Items", the "To:" field always defaults to me rather than person I sent to

[ravl13]

With Outlook 2007, whenever I reply to a message in my "Sent Items" box, the person in the "To:" field is always me, and I have to change it to the address of the person I originally sent the email to.



For example, this picture illustrates an email I sent, in my Sent Items folder:

http://imgur.com/NejXBhR,1DlUG6I#1

Now when I click the reply button in that message, I get this:

http://imgur.com/NejXBhR,1DlUG6I#0

With me in the "To:" field. I'm guessing this happens because I, Robby Van Liew, appear as the "From:" field in the original message that I want to reply to.

Is there a way though, to change the behavior so that when I click the Reply button in my first screenshot, that it brings up the other person (in this case Ray) in the "To:" field in my Reply window in the second screenshot?

[thetraininglady]

My first question would be why are you replying to emails from your Sent Items?

Secondly yes you are correct, because you are trying to "reply" to an email in your sent items, because you were the sender, it will default to trying to reply back to yourself so you either need to manually change the name in the To field or instead of replying, simply use the Forward option instead and enter the persons name. This however does not automate Outlook putting the original recipients name in the To field.

If you did want to do this from the Sent Items you could work around it by opening the email from the Sent Items list, from the Actions group select the Other Actions button and choose Resend message. The original person you sent the email to will already be listed in the To field but so will the original text you sent so you would just need to delete out the body text and type in your next message.

[ravl13]

Thanks Belinda, for your info.

To answer your question, the reason I'm replying to the Sent Items is because the person has not responded to my Sent message, and I need to follow up with them.

[thetraininglady]

Ok there are two options for getting around this.

1) Instead of using the reply button, you can perform a "resend" on the sent item. Open the email message from your Sent Items and then click the Other Actions button and choose Resend this message. This option will have the recipient in the To field and will include the original body text also. You could delete body text if you wanted or just send a complete copy of the email.

2) You can Forward the email. I generally use this option as I can include a message like "Did you get my email below which was sent last week??". When you forward you will need to enter the recipients name into to the To field and it will give you a blank area in the body to type your next piece of correspondance.

Hope this helps.

[ravl13]

Yeah, I've been using the "Forward" method, but I'll check out the resend option - wasn't aware of that.