Assigning a default email address in iOS 12

My @me.com email address no longer works for sending emails from my iPad. I have to manually change the outgoing email address to my @icloud.com address.
I have tried to follow these tips from Apple to change the default to the iCloud address but the Default Account item does not appear:

Anyone else have this issue?

Not having an issue with my @mac.com address.

If you want to change I’m pretty sure you just swap out me.com with iCloud.com in your Mail app preferences, wherever it may appear and the Passwords and Accounts section of Settings.

My main concern is that the Apple Support advice is incorrect - iOS settings no longer have an option to change the default email address.

It does on my iPhone. I can choose the iCloud.com (or Mac.com or Me.com) as the default account in Settings > Mail, then choose among them and by which alias in Settings > (your Apple ID) > Mail.

Interesting - there is no option for default mail address under Settings/Mail on either my iPhone or iPad. This for iOS 12.3.1.

For iOS (12.3.1) try:

Settings>Passwords & Accounts

Tap the account in question, in your case I suspect ‘iCloud’. Within that, things might vary. I don’t have an iCloud account, but when I tap on my IMAP account, then tap on the ‘Account…email@addr.ess’ line, then the ‘Email…email@addr.ess’ line, it gives the the option to add email addresses and then select one as default (it gets a small checkmark by it). So, yeah, it’s buried 5 levels deep and nowhere do you see any intimation that you’re setting your default reply-to address.

For macOS (10.14.5) Mail:

Mail>Preferences>Accounts>Account Information>Email Address:>Edit Email Addresses…

Then when you have the addresses entered, you can choose the default using the “Email Address:” popup. Again, there’s nothing whatsoever to guide you to that location, and no indication anywhere that you’re setting a default reply-to address.

Oh, and be careful that you use Mail>Preferences>Accounts and not Mail>Accounts, which will take you someplace completely different.

–(the intuitive UI is dead)Ron

FWIW, that does not work for me (with an IMAP account). At the final step (the ‘Email…email@addr.ess’ line), I simply get the option to edit the existing email address.

Too true.

This I did see.

Here’s what I get at that step:

If you “Add Another Email…” then this screen will have multiple addresses:

You tap the one you want to be the default, and the little blue checkmark will switch to the email address you tap and will become the default.

I seem to have left out the “Add Another Email…” step, sorry.

I do not get an Add Another Email… at that step. I do have Add Account at the first step after touching Passwords & Accounts, but that does not allow me to select an existing account. This is on an iPhone SE running 12.3.1 (16F203).

But I just jumped in the conversation to say that the interface I’m seeing is different from what you’re describing. Since I can choose a default account from Settings > Mail, don’t feel like you need to help me find how to set a default account. On the other hand, if you want to try to figure out why we have different interfaces with the same iOS, that’s fine. (Is it possible that the carrier has something to do with it? I see you have T-Mobile and I have Virgin.)

Thank you for the suggestions.
I only have one email account activated in iOS (iCloud). I think my problem is that I can also use @me.com (and even @mac.com) and they are effectively email aliases for the iCloud account. So iOS doesn’t see them as additional emails, meaning that a default “account” is not relevant and so does not appear as an option.
I started this thread because emails sent with my @me.com address failed to send and I had to manually change the address to @icloud.com. There does not seem to be a way around this.
I don’t know if Apple has suspended (retired) use of @me.com for outgoing emails or if it is due to me travelling overseas at present, which would be weird but not unexpected from Apple these days.