Displayed Address Book Problem

[ABHarris]

When I click "WRITE" to send a new e-mail, the address book that appears on the screen is more often than not
the "ALL ADDRESS BOOKS". For over 2 and a half years it has every time displayed the "PERSONAL ADDRESS BOOK"
which is the one I want. The "ALL ADDRESS BOOKS" contains too much garbage.

How can I make Thunderbird make the default display the "PERSONAL ADDRESS BOOK" every time I hit "WRITE"?

Thanks, A.B. Harris

[DanRaisch]

For now, you can't. Displaying "All Address Books" is the way it is intended to work and there is no config option to change that default. All you can do is use the combined address books or change the selection from "All Address Books" to the "Personal Address Book" when the Write window opens.

[ABHarris]

So this is a change THUNDERBIRD made just 2 days ago?????? As I mentioned earlier, since January of 2013 when I started using THUNDERBIRD for emails
the 'PERSONAL ADDRESS BOOK" was always displayed. I can't imagine anyone preferring the "ALL ADDRESS BOOKS" option with all the clutter intermingled
among the Addresses. Can you please change it back and if someone needs the ALL version let them change the selection.......I would suggest there would be more changes from "ALL" to PERSONAL" than from "PERSONAL" to "ALL". Please reconsider and change it back to the way it was...........Thanks, A.B. Harris

[nedrikfox]

I'm having the same problem as well, I've been using Thunderbird for about 7 years or so & until recently when I went to send or forward an email the Personal Address book always opened by default but suddenly since a couple of weeks ago it just started to open the first address book on the left which is the All Address books, fair enough I just need to select the Personal one myself but I really preferred it when it just happened by itself.

All Addresses has a ton of addresses that I rarely use & it takes ages to weed through them for the ones that I do use regularly which is where the Personal one comes in.

[ineuw]

Do what I did to bypass this issue. Blocked updating in Options\Advanced (IMPORTANT) and downloaded version 31.5.0. I did this for Linux, OS-X and Windows. Any version of 31.0.n is good where the address books are not merged on opening. After 31, version numbers jump to 38. or at least could not find anything in between.

http://www.oldversion.com/

I feel vindicated when complained about this issue at the very beginning. Besides my personals, I have about a hundred email addresses required to be in the address book, otherwise their messages will end up as junk or worse but, I don't want to look at them in my address book when writing. Merging them was and is a stupid idea by someone may be a TB programmer but does not use TB.

[DanRaisch]

Please reconsider and change it back to the way it was.

Sorry but we can't help you with that. This forum is not run by or formally associated with Mozilla. We're an independent user-helping-user community.

Yes, there should be an option to allow the user a choice between a default address book and "All address books" but for now there isn't. Please keep in mind that the availability of that contact sidebar (in the Write window) is relatively new. Until a recent update, an extension was required to have the sidebar displayed in that window. And also that it's just two mouse clicks to select the Personal Address Book when seeking to reduce the number of addresses to be reviewed.