See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1366689#answer-1480662

sfhowes,

Thanks.

Bug 1669274 is talking about the Display Name behaviour but it's not talking about the problem I am seeing, although the work-around seems to be the same (i.e. to toggle the setting off/on). However, it does confirm that toggling the Display Name setting off/on causes "a database" to be refreshed which is the action that I think is not happening when I add/update/delete a contact in my address book. Quote below.

> go to Preferences:General and toggle the "Show only display name.." checkbox to cause the database to be refreshed.

This used to work in previous versions but I can't remember when it stopped working as this has been a pain for me for quite a long time and I've only just got around to reporting it as an issue. I'm sure the issue here is that this "database" is not being refreshed when an address book is modified. If that function has been disabled for performance reasons (e.g. for large numbers of contacts) then that could be a reason for the behaviour I am seeing but I have a personal account with just 1161 contacts across my address books and that's not many.

Bug 1039177 isn't relevant. I don't see any special characters or DBCS characters in any display names although I did find an "&" in one of them which I've now removed.

Where do we go from here?

The images you posted always display a 'search' result. So it is unclear whether you are talking about a search result not being updated. I'm assuming the Preferences:General "Show only display name.." checkbox is selected.

Clear the search result, so you are viewing the folder message list.

Select an email where sender is not in address book, so email displays in lower Message Pane. In the header - Click on the FROM email address with an outlined star and select 'Add to Address Book' the 'outline of star' should change to a solid blue star. click on FROM email address again and select 'Edit contact' then click on 'Edit details' Type 'TEST' in the 'Display' - so it is distinctly different. Make sure the 'Always prefer display name over message header' is selected. click on OK

What do you now see in the header of that email? Does that FROM email address now show 'TEST' ?

Toad-Hall, Thanks for your input.

> The images you posted always display a 'search' result. > So it is unclear whether you are talking about a search result not being updated.

It's not a search problem. I used the search feature on my inbox purely and simply to filter the on screen results so they only showed the entry I wanted to capture for evidence purposes, to save me from having to edit out / obfuscate the other results to protect the email addresses of real people as I was taking a screen shot from my live inbox.

> I'm assuming the Preferences:General "Show only display name.." checkbox is selected.

Yes. It's ticked and works for 100s of email addresses that are in my address book with an entry in the "Display Name" field whether the inbox (or other folder) is searched/filtered or not. It's only when I add, remove or change the "Display Name" field in an address book entry that the problem occurs.

As I've said already. The behaviour is probably down to the cache that controls what is displayed in the user interface not being refreshed until the Preferences:General "Show only display name.." checkbox is unchecked then checked again. That action appears to cause that cache to be rebuilt/refreshed and then the display name shows correctly for the changes I've made to entries in the address book.

How do we get the code owner/maintainer to look at the source code to understand what the expected behaviour is here?

One other thing ...

I've already tried deleting the panacea.dat file in case that was corrupt and was causing this problem. Thunderbird rebuilt it when it restarted, and the problem persisted afterward.

So I did a bit more digging to see what files are changed on the filesystem in my profile directory from a terminal window.

• When I add a new contact to an address book with a display name (of my choice) then I can see that the directoryTree.json, abook-1.sqlite-wal, panacea.dat and prefs.js files get updated. However. The From field in the UI for my inbox does not show the Display Name for that contact from the address book contact I just added.
• When I uncheck then check the Preferences:General "Show only display name.." checkbox then I see that the xulstore.json file is updated along with prefs.js (obviously as I just changed a preference). Now the correct Display Name for the contact shows in the From field in the UI for my inbox, i.e. it shows what I put in as the Display Name field in that contact's address book entry.

Reversing this.

• When I delete the new contact from my address book then I see the directoryTree.json, abook-1.sqlite-wal, panacea.dat, logins.json and prefs.js files get updated. However, the From field in the UI for my inbox continues to show the details from the Display Name that was in that contact's address book entry, which it shouldn't since I just deleted it.
• When I uncheck then check the Preferences:General "Show only display name.." checkbox then I see only the prefs.js file being updated (obviously as I just updated a preference). The From field in the UI for my inbox no longer shows the Display Name from the now deleted contact. It has reverted to show the name from the mail message itself (as its supposed to).

I might be going down a rabbit hole here, and the file/cache that's important might not be one of the ones I've mentioned above, i.e. it could be in a sub-folder that I'm not seeing as I've only been looking in the root of my profile folder.