I use Gmail (with the setting set "from" to another account within Gmail). Recently, because of the use of the Gmail SMTP server, my mails ended up in the spam folders or my students (the method Gmail uses to mark your email as a different account is rather crude). So I tried to set my university SMTP server as the default option - but no matter what I try, I always get the Gmail SMTP server first and have to manually select the other (university) server which is supposedly the default as an option in each new message. I quit several times, to no avail. The correct SMTP server is selected as default, but what I actually get when I start a new mail, is the non-default Gmail server.

Even after having deleted the Gmail SMTP server it STILL shows up as the default in new messages (which does not make any sense to me). How can that be? It should not even exist as an option! All mails sent that way also disappear and do never make it to the light of day. This is VERY irritating - if you forget to change manually to the supposedly default (and only) SMTP server setting, then your mail - although reported as sent during the process - actually never makes it.

What am I missing here?