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How many email addresses can I put in one "to" field?

  • 3 replies
  • 3 have this problem
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  • Last reply by Zenos

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I'm stumped. I need to send an email to about 23 people, none of which are in my address book, nor do I want them in my address book. This is a one off email for tax purposes only (I own a non-profit). However, normally with other email programs I can just put in one email, a comma, then another email, a comma, so on and so forth in the first TO field. Thus putting all 23 addresses in the one TO field just separated by comma's. Can I do this with thunderbird? There is nothing in your help files at all about this question. I really do not want to put all these in my address book just to have to remove them again later. I guess I could make a "group" and then remove the group later but again, that's work that I really don't want to do. And whatever I have in a group, shows up in my regular address book as well for some reason so again, I'm taking them out of there after I send the email. There has to be a better way, which would be to be able to put them all in one TO field with just comma's between them. Hopefully! ... thanks...

I'm stumped. I need to send an email to about 23 people, none of which are in my address book, nor do I want them in my address book. This is a one off email for tax purposes only (I own a non-profit). However, normally with other email programs I can just put in one email, a comma, then another email, a comma, so on and so forth in the first TO field. Thus putting all 23 addresses in the one TO field just separated by comma's. Can I do this with thunderbird? There is nothing in your help files at all about this question. I really do not want to put all these in my address book just to have to remove them again later. I guess I could make a "group" and then remove the group later but again, that's work that I really don't want to do. And whatever I have in a group, shows up in my regular address book as well for some reason so again, I'm taking them out of there after I send the email. There has to be a better way, which would be to be able to put them all in one TO field with just comma's between them. Hopefully! ... thanks...

Chosen solution

Yes, you can use commas but I would personally use return and enter each on its own To: line. Either way, they will all be shown in red because Thunderbird doesn't know them and can't verify them against your Address Book.

By default, Thunderbird collects outgoing addresses it doesn't know and stores them in an address book called Collected Addresses. So even if you don't specifically save them, you're likely to have them saved for you anyway.

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Chosen Solution

Yes, you can use commas but I would personally use return and enter each on its own To: line. Either way, they will all be shown in red because Thunderbird doesn't know them and can't verify them against your Address Book.

By default, Thunderbird collects outgoing addresses it doesn't know and stores them in an address book called Collected Addresses. So even if you don't specifically save them, you're likely to have them saved for you anyway.

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Thanks, I'll give it a try. Hopefully they don't all go in the collected addresses, I really don't need them and there are far too many in there already :-)

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I keep my Collected Addresses empty. I review it periodically, move useful addresses (if any) to a proper address book, and delete the rest.

Your one-time addresses will indeed be added to Collected Addresses. If you don't find that behaviour useful, you can go to

Tools|Options|Composition|Addressing

and change the settings for the collection of outgoing addresses.

In my experience, if you expect and plan to use something only once, inevitably you find that you soon need it again. ;-)