• Bad interpretation of "Reply to" address containing commas

    By Ron Murch 2 decades ago

    Hi:



    I have noticed that when I reply to a received message for which the sender's "Reply to" address is listed in the format of:



    "Murch, Ron" (with or without the quotes, but with an embedded comma and containing the sender's name usually in reverse order and the email address in angle brackets)



    my reply does not properly interpret the Reply To address and a message with a blank "To" address remains in my outbox as undeliverable until I clear it. If, during composition, I remove the comma after the last name, it all works fine. If I try to insert a comma, I get the comma+space characters that normally are inserted when using a "To" list. It does not seem to matter whether the full name is in quotes or not.



    I had this same problem/feature with R7 and with the OpenNTF template for it as well.



    Has anyone else noticed this? Have I got some weird setting messed up?



    Thanks for whatever help you can provide.



    If you need further info or some examples, I'd be happy to provide them. just email me at murch@ucalgary.ca.



    Thanks.


    • Ron Murch -
    • Follo-up dignostic info

      By Ron Murch 2 decades ago

      Further to my original post on this, I just noticed that the "Reply to"" addresses in the "lastname, firstname" format (with the double-quotes and the comma) do parse correctly if I select "Reply" from the drop-down list . In this case the reply does not include the original note or any attachments.



      Selecting "Reply with history" (the default choice) or "Reply without attachment(s)" (from the drop-down list) produces the problem regardless whether the original message has attachments.



      Also, if, while composing the reply, I edit the "Reply to" address and delete the comma that is originally inserted, the original space following the comma is also deleted. if I then insert a comma, the response is remarkably like what happens when I want to add an additional address in an address list - I get the comma plus a space (or other special character?).



      It looks like the parsing algorithm thinks that all commas separate email addresses. In these cases, some commas separate the lastname, firstname sequences inside double-quotes to provide the recipient identification. As a number of email systems have standardized on Reply to formats that use this format, it might be helpful to adjust the parsing. Probably tricky but, it seems to work on the Reply choice so maybe it can be made to work on the other choices as well?



      This behaviour seems to work the same way on the "Reply to All" choices also.



      Does anyone else have any ideas on this?



      Should the priority be changed to Medium?



      Thanks.


      • Ron -