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thunderbird contact(s) refuse to copy between multiple lists and between books to lists

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by Zenos

minionsweb
minionsweb
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The crux of it is this. I have imported some club membership lists using the csv import function, associated the fields, resulting in created address books. Next step was to create mailing lists from the books. The lists are 3 groups, and the books are the break outs of those 3 groups.

First book has the largest # of contacts and the associated mailing list I needed to create went smoothly. All those same contacts needed to be applied to a second "master" list, and again the copy into that list went smoothly.

2nd address book created fine, 2nd related list has a hiccup. One contact refuses to copy into the associated list, and then only 1 of 20+ contacts copy into the "master" list.

3rd address book, created fine, go co copy paste, and nothing, no paste option availble in edit menu, no reaction to short cuts. Try a drag and drop, and it appears all 3rd book contacts copied, and the bottom right of the viewport states as much, but inspection of the list shows no contacts have been added.

I have tried select copy paste via menus - thing is, I can only select, but copy and paste ate greyed out, so that doesnt work. Grab, drag and dropping items singly or many at once does nothing as well. Have tried safe mode, reboots, anything I can think of..... all know is this is extremely frustrating that i cannot create a complete list

Searching help topics has been useless as well, nothing seems to address the direct problem i am experiencing.


Thanks in advance. Minionsweb

The crux of it is this. I have imported some club membership lists using the csv import function, associated the fields, resulting in created address books. Next step was to create mailing lists from the books. The lists are 3 groups, and the books are the break outs of those 3 groups. First book has the largest # of contacts and the associated mailing list I needed to create went smoothly. All those same contacts needed to be applied to a second "master" list, and again the copy into that list went smoothly. 2nd address book created fine, 2nd related list has a hiccup. One contact refuses to copy into the associated list, and then only 1 of 20+ contacts copy into the "master" list. 3rd address book, created fine, go co copy paste, and nothing, no paste option availble in edit menu, no reaction to short cuts. Try a drag and drop, and it appears all 3rd book contacts copied, and the bottom right of the viewport states as much, but inspection of the list shows no contacts have been added. I have tried select copy paste via menus - thing is, I can only select, but copy and paste ate greyed out, so that doesnt work. Grab, drag and dropping items singly or many at once does nothing as well. Have tried safe mode, reboots, anything I can think of..... all know is this is extremely frustrating that i cannot create a complete list Searching help topics has been useless as well, nothing seems to address the direct problem i am experiencing. Thanks in advance. Minionsweb

All Replies (1)

Zenos
Zenos
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The method provided to move or copy contacts is drag and drop; you're wasting your time looking for a copy-and-paste option.

I don't understand your description of a "break out" or a "master list"; a Mailing List is a subset of the address book inside which it is located. Any entry in a Mailing List must have a corresponding entry in its parent address book. If you add a contact to a Mailing List who isn't already in the parent address book, a minimal entry for that Contact will be created in the host address book. So it's rather easy to generate spurious duplicated Contact entries in multiple address books.

Bearing this in mind, I have never tried to move or copy a Contact from one Mailing List to another. I'd rather go to the "base" data, in the address book itself. However, having just tried it here, I can confirm that drag-and-drop between Mailing Lists appears to work.

This is largely apocryphal, but several years on this and similar forums have told me:

  • avoid Contacts without email addresses
  • avoid List names and descriptions with embedded spaces (and as a matter of good practice, I'd also avoid any characters normally associated with file and path names: e.g. backslash, forward slash, asterisk. The characters you use here may become used in filenames, leading to unexpected results.

Modified by Zenos