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efaq: Expanding aliases when sending mail

 
 11.3 Why doesn’t Emacs expand my aliases when sending mail?
 ===========================================================
 
 The Emacs Manual (emacs)Mail Aliases.
 
    • Normally, Emacs expands aliases when you send the message.  To
      expand them before this, use ‘M-x expand-mail-aliases’.
 
    • Emacs normally only reads the ‘.mailrc’ file once per session, when
      you start to compose your first mail message.  If you edit the file
      after this, you can use ‘M-x build-mail-aliases’ to make Emacs
      reread it.  Prior to Emacs 24.1, this is not an interactive
      command, so you must instead type ‘M-: (build-mail-aliases) <RET>’.
 
    • If you like, you can expand mail aliases as abbrevs, as soon as you
      type them in.  To enable this feature, execute the following:
 
           (add-hook 'mail-mode-hook 'mail-abbrevs-setup)
 
      Note that the aliases are expanded automatically only after you
      type a word-separator character (e.g., <RET> or ‘,’).  You can
      force their expansion by moving point to the end of the alias and
      typing ‘C-x a e’ (‘M-x expand-abbrev’).
 

Info Catalog efaq: Saving a copy of outgoing mail efaq: Mail and news efaq: Sorting the messages in an Rmail folder