By default Thunderbird saves all OUTGOING addresses to the Collected Address book. You have to modify that setup to collect incoming addresses. Personally that would be crazy. Who wants all the Junk addresses in their address books?

Maybe I didn't explain my problem clearly enough. My problem is not with collecting OUTGOING addresses but with some function in Thunderbird that think might be collecting additional email addresses if it sees something on an INCOMING email that matches with an existing Contact and then puts the email address into the Contact record.

Let's say that I have a Contact record in my Address Book for you and it has your name, city, state, and a personal email address like "airmail@gmail.com" and a secondary email address like "mywork@yahoo.com". You send me an email from your secondary email address. What happens to me is that T-Bird finds a match and inserts your work address into my Contact record as the primary email address so I wind up with 2 instances of the same email address in my contact record for you. That is what I ave to find a way to stop.

jbacinti

I understood you completely. My answer seems self explanatory.

You have to modify that setup to collect incoming addresses.

There are add ons that do this but YOU would have had to install them.

But Airmail, I don't want to collect email addresses if they are going to overwrite existing addresses. Anyway, where to I do the modification you mention?

Thanks,

jbacinti

You would have had to installed an add on to collect incoming messages. I have no way of knowing what you have done to modify the default. I suggest you look at the add on screen to see what you have installed.

I have no addons installed that do this. Any other ideas? Anyone?

jbacinti

Thunderbird does not automatically edit contacts. You would need to use an addon specifically designed to do that.

Thunderbird does collect outgoing email addresses if that option is selected.

So, lets start at the beginning to see what is going on. We need to understand your current setup. So please supply some info.

'Tools' > 'Options' > 'Composition' > 'Addressing' tab or 'Menu icon' > 'Options' > 'Options' > 'Composition' > 'Addressing' tab

Q1: Do you have the following selected and if yes, what is the name of the address book which collects them ? 'Automatically add outgoing email addresses to my: ' name of address book.

Open 'Address Book' By default, at the moment, it should open showing 'All Address Books'. click on the far right column header icon - see image below You need to have the following column headers displaying: select the column headers: Name, Email, Additional email, 'Address book'

you are looking to see how many instances there are of that particular person and also email address as sometimes the email address can display in the Name field. Sort 'All Address Books' by Name and note information then sort by 'Email' and also 'Additional Email', noting info.

Q2: How many instances of the persons Name appear and what address book name are they located in ? I'm looking for this sort of answer, but this is just a hyperthetical example:

I see three as follows

• Joe bloggs name, correct Email address, correct additional email address, Personal Address Book.
• Joe bloggs name, incorrect Email address, correct additional email address, Personal Address Book.
• bloggs email address in Name field, incorrect Email address, no additional email address, Collected Addresses

Q3: What OS are you using and what version of Thunderbird ?

Q1 - No.

Q2 - My friend appears only once in my main address book and both of the email addresses are the same and are not the one he wants me to use. I change the Address Book record of him every time I get an email from his work address (Additional Email Address) and almost immediately his work address reappears. Now I do have some of his emails saved in a separate folder and that folder would include emails from both his email addresses.

Q3 - Windows 10 Home and 38.3.0.

Thanks,

jbacinti

re : My friend appears only once in my main address book

Just so that I understand you correctly, can you confirm what you mean by 'my main address book ' ? Are you talking about 'All Address Books' or 'Personal Address Book' or an address book you created and called it 'Main address book' ?

I was refering to the top 'All Address Books' which is not a real address book, but a returned search display of every instance of every person/email address combined from every address book. Please confirm you did as I specified in the 'All Address Books' and there was only the one result which had your friends name in the Name column. Please confirm you had tested to see if there was another instance where the email address was in the Name column.

I use the default "Personal Address Book" and have created another small book for s special purpose and he does not appear in that one only the "Personal Address Book" default.

Sorry about the other part of the question. There is only a single instance of him in the Name column and these is no instance of his email address appearing in the Name column.

jbacinti

Check the address book is saving correctly.

Select the 'Personal Address book' select the contact click on Properties Edit the contact details correcting the email addresses. Close and reopen Thunderbird. Access the Address Book, select Personal Address Book. Has it actually saved the changes?

Yes, changes were saved. For this particular record I now have the "Email" address as his personal address and have the "Additional Email" as his work address. I'm going to send him an email to his personal address and ask him to send one to me from his work address and see what happens. I'll let you know.

jbacinti

Toad-Hall,

Did my test and received a reply; nothing in my Address book changed. I'll follow this for a while but will consider it resolved, at least for now. Thanks for your help.