Yesterday when I logged into Gmail I saw a new feature; the ability to send email from your Gmail account from any email address (providing you verify the address by clicking a link / entering a verification code). Note: this doesn't simply add a "Reply-To" address – it changes the details "From" field.

The FAQs are here:

How do I customize the 'From:' address on outgoing mail?
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=20616

I didn't request to add an email address to Gmail. Why did I receive a verification message?
http://gmail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=20318

(I've found that sometimes you get a "Document Not Found" error when visiting those links, so it appears they're not yet available on all of the "Help" servers. If this happens, try reloading the page a few times.)

You should be able to access this feature from within Gmail by clicking 'Settings' and then selecting the 'Accounts' tab. From there, you should be able to click 'Add another email address' in the 'Send mail as:' section.

(All this was there yesterday and this morning but it's gone from my account now.)

I set one up earlier and this now appears in a "From" dropdown on my 'Compose Mail' screen.

Anyone else seen this?

I was able to see it, but only when using the English interface, in French it's not there. It's a fine feature that was missing! Thanks for letting us know!

No problem. And thank you for the "hint" – although you may not realise you provided one...

The reason it was no longer showing for me was because I changed my "Gmail display language" from "English (US)" to "English (UK)"; I just changed it back and it appeared again.

Yes, I see it too. Seems like a nice feature to have.

This is more useful for me than even the GoogleTalk.

Thank so very much for the heads up!

But wait . . . take a look at how the "sent from" address appears to the recipient. I'm getting wild variations including:

Bob <alternateotherdomain.com>gmail.com

And in addition, it includes the Sent By line that shows the master gmail account address.

Not acceptable!

In outlook it shows as "From: <other account> On Behalf Of <gmail acct>" or something like that. its not a replacement of the actual sender in the header, that would be fraudulent. its just showing that its from another address.

Very pleased to see this feature as it was the reason I went back to Yahoo! Plus email. As noted though, it's not quite there yet as it essentially just "sends on behalf of". Yahoo! must take the view that if you've verified the email address then it is okay to change the sender totally.

What it's actually doing is adding a "Sender" header to the email too. So, for more advanced email clients like Outlook, the client shows the "From" field as:

usernamegmail.com on behalf of User Name [usernameexample.com]

The header sent with the email actually looks like this:

From: User Name <usernameexample.com>
Sender: usernamegmail.com

So, they are actually changing the "From" field – it's just that they're adding a "Sender" field too.

Why they have to do this whey they've already got you verify the emaill address is a mystery to me. It's the only thing that's now putting my off using it as my main email account.

I agree with Tony Rescoe.

If Google add and "X-Sender" field instead of a "Sender" field, the "usernamegmail.com on behalf of User Name [usernameexample.com]" phenomenon will not occur in Outlook, nor other mail clients including webmail like yahoo.

Does anybody know how to suggest this feature to Google?

Suggestions to gmail are done here.
https://services.google.com/inquiry/gmail_suggest/

Thanks Colin!

Suggestions made to gmail!

EXCELLENT – I'd complained about this feature disapearing as it was one of the reasons I moved to GMail.
Thanks guys/girls for helping me get it back!!
Lets hope they set it up the same as Yahoo then!!!

thanks Eric/Tony, I was using UK English and couldn't see it either. Do you think this is intetional? I've heard the've had some with the UK 'googlemail'.

I'm having a good time testing http://domains.live.com where I can hook my domain up to MSN. When will Gmail support domains?.. I'd like to point my MX records at them.. Yahoo and MSN both let us do that.

GMail has a beta program for a GMail variation supporting domains :
https://www.google.com/hosted/