This article explains several reasons why the email address you used to subscribe to a group, may be different than the email address you regularly use. Includes how to find out which email address you are using in a group and how to add an alternate posting address.

There are four possible explanations for why your my email address may be different than the address you used to subscribe:

• By default, the email address that is used for a group is the user’s Yahoo! Mail, unless the user changes it.
• Some email providers use a “from” field that is different from the actual email address. For example, a corporate user might receive email at john@company.com, not realizing that when he sends email it technically is sent from john@mail.company.com.
• Some users will join a group using a list email address (e.g. team@company.com) that distributes messages to multiple users. However, when these users post messages to the group, the messages come from the user’s individual address (e.g. john@company.com).
• Some users intentionally redirect messages from one email address to another.

Unfortunately, when the "from" address does not exactly match the subscriber address, the message cannot be posted.

You can see what address you are sending from by sending a message to yourself and looking at the "From" field in the full header. (To learn how to look at full headers: See the help information in your email program for instructions or go to the WHOA (Working to Halt Online Abuse) site (English only) for instructions for many email programs.)

To see what address you are subscribed to for a group is easy if you have a Yahoo! ID. Simply go to the My Groups page and look at the email address field for that group. If you are an "email only" user, it's trickier. You need to:

1. Open the full header of a message from the group.
2. Find the line in the header that begins with "Return Path" (it will look something like this: “Return-Path: sentto-14545487-4278-1270728302 john=company.com@returns.groups.yahoo.com”).
3. Ignore the “sentto-long string of numbers” at the front and the “@returns.groups.yahoo.com” at the end.
4. The part in the middle (in this case “john=company.com”) is the address being sent to (though you have to convert the “=” to an “@” sign).

If these don’t match, the easiest solution is to add the email address you actually sent from as an “Alternate Posting Address.” To do so:

1. Go to the Email Preferences page.
2. Click the Edit link next to the email address you use for the group.
3. Add the email address you send from as an “Alternate Posting Address” and save the changes.

Please Note:

• Alternate Posting Addresses on Yahoo! Groups are separate from the list of email addresses associated with your Yahoo! ID account (“Alternate Posting Addresses” require verification).
• To make use of “Alternate Posting Addresses”, email only users will have to get a Yahoo! ID and become full web access members using the Membership Wizard.