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### 11.3 Why doesn’t Emacs expand my aliases when sending mail?

See The Emacs Manual in The Emacs Manual.

- 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`).