Setting up your mail app so Skoutd can hand off to it

What is actually going wrong

Almost always this: the device is signed in to a different email account from the one you want the coach to see. A parent's laptop signed in to their own Outlook while the athlete's account is a Gmail address. A phone whose default mail app still holds an address from years ago. A school Chromebook signed in to a district account.

Nothing is broken when this happens. The browser hands the message to the default mail app, and that app opens under whoever it is signed in as — which is exactly what it is supposed to do. It is a mismatch between two settings, not a fault in either.

It is worth fixing rather than working around, because an email from the athlete's own address is the strongest version of this: the coach sees a real personal address, the reply lands in the right inbox, and the sending reputation is the athlete's own rather than shared.

On a computer — the quickest check

• •Press Send in Skoutd and choose Gmail or Outlook rather than “my computer's mail app”. That opens webmail in a browser tab, where the account in use is visible in the corner.
• •Look at the From address in the compose window BEFORE sending. This is the single check that catches the problem.
• •Gmail: if it is the wrong account, click the avatar top-right, switch to the right one, then press Send in Skoutd again. Gmail opens whichever Google account is default in that browser, so switching accounts fixes every future hand-off too.
• •Outlook and Hotmail: the same — switch the signed-in account, then hand off again.
• •Still wrong? Open the browser in a private window, sign in to the account you want, and hand off from there. It is a reliable way to get one email out while you sort the default.

On a phone

A phone offers one option — your device's mail app — and hands it the whole message, so there is no length limit and nothing to paste. The account it uses is whichever that app is set to send from.

iPhone: Settings → Apps → Mail → Default Mail App decides which app opens. Inside Mail, Settings → Mail → Default Account decides which address it sends from when several are set up. Both matter; the second is the one that puts the wrong name on an email.

Android: Settings → Apps → Default apps → Mail app for which app opens, then the account switcher inside Gmail (tap your avatar) for which address it sends from.

If the athlete's address is not on the phone at all, adding it to the mail app is the real fix and takes a couple of minutes. A parent's phone can hold the athlete's account alongside their own.

If you cannot fix it right now

Use Send via Skoutd. It sends the message for you, sets the athlete's address as the reply-to so a coach who hits Reply still writes to them, and logs it on the program timeline exactly like any other send.

It is the second button rather than the first for one reason only, and it is not about you: mail Skoutd sends carries a sending reputation shared with every other family here, while mail from your own account carries only yours. That is also why it counts against a monthly allowance and sending from your own account does not.

Nothing about the email changes between the two. Same words, same coach, same record afterwards.

Two things that are not what they look like

A long email will say it is long and put the message on your clipboard. That is not an error and nothing has been cut: mail apps opened from a link cannot carry more than about 1,900 characters, so Skoutd opens the window with the coach and subject filled in and hands you the body to paste. Gmail and Outlook on the web, and phones, take the whole thing without this step.

Yahoo fills the message in but strips the line breaks. The formatted version is copied for you — click into the message, select all, and paste to restore the paragraphs. iCloud publishes no way for a website to fill in a message at all, so it opens your inbox with the email copied and you press Compose and paste.