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How do I change the default address book from the Personal Address Book?

  • 9 replies
  • 20 have this problem
  • 30 views
  • Last reply by jestrader

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Whenever I click on an email address from within an email and ask to add it to my address book, the contact is added to Personal Address Book. How do I change that so that new addresses will be added to another book?

Whenever I click on an email address from within an email and ask to add it to my address book, the contact is added to Personal Address Book. How do I change that so that new addresses will be added to another book?

Chosen solution

I've unset sfhowes' post as the solution, per jestrader's statement that he clicked the button in error.

I don't think there is a way to set a different address book as the default. There was a request for that feature to be added, and it's still open.

One way to work around it might be to move all your addresses into other address books, and use the Personal Address Book like a contacts inbox. Every once in a while, go through your personal address book, triage, and move each entry into the address book it should be in.

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All Replies (9)

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I do not know of a way to change the default but after you click the star beside the address to add it to the address book, click the star a second time to open the edit dialog box. There is a drop down list of your address books to make the change there.

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Thanks. I have done that but it doesn't always work. Sometimes it does and that's fine, but other times it either adds the address to both books or ignores me completely.

My search continues!

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If an address book doesn't accept additions or deletions, then it may be corrupted. Rebuilding your address books is easy and mainly a matter of exporting, deleting from the profile, then re-importing: http://gsfn.us/t/34o6w

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Not even close to being part of my problem. My address books work just fine; I just want to change which one is the default when adding new contacts.

Modified by jestrader

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Then why did you select it as the solution for your problem and close the question?

The Personal Address book is the default. It is not a changeable item. If you cannot reliably change the selected address book to add the new contact to as I described above, then you have an address book problem that needs to be addressed using sfhowes advise above.

This statement by YOU seems to dispute your claim that your address book works just fine. Thanks. I have done that but it doesn't always work. Sometimes it does and that's fine, but other times it either adds the address to both books or ignores me completely.

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I clicked the wrong button and then correctred myself. Have you never made an error?

The problem is NOT the address book.

The problem is that I want to know if there is a way to change the default.

Stop responding to me if you can't be civil.

Modified by jestrader

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Chosen Solution

I've unset sfhowes' post as the solution, per jestrader's statement that he clicked the button in error.

I don't think there is a way to set a different address book as the default. There was a request for that feature to be added, and it's still open.

One way to work around it might be to move all your addresses into other address books, and use the Personal Address Book like a contacts inbox. Every once in a while, go through your personal address book, triage, and move each entry into the address book it should be in.

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One place where a different address book can be set as 'default', as far as being displayed, is the Contacts sidebar (F9 in a Write window), so that one could employ the PAB as described above, while using another AB for addressing purposes.

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Thanks. It seems that the default is forever the default. I've been moving addresses around as the work around, I was just hoping that someone had a backdoor to changing the default that I haven't found yet.

Thanks again. I'm going to close this ticket.