[resolved!] add all INCOMING addresses to address book

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chrizoo
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[resolved!] add all INCOMING addresses to address book

Post by chrizoo »

Hi everybody!

In options>composition>addressing you can check "automatically add outgoing email addresses" to an address book.

--> Is there a way to have TB also add all INCOMING email addresses? <--



(for example can we change something in the TB config so that the option above applies to both incoming + outgoing emails?)
(or is there another way?)

I would be very very grateful if someone could help me on this one ....
kind regards,
chrizoo
Last edited by chrizoo on February 20th, 2008, 6:33 am, edited 5 times in total.
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DanRaisch
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Post by DanRaisch »

That is not possible and would be a very questionable option if it were. Why would one wish to save all the addresses from SPAM messages?

You can manually select to save addresses from received messages by installing the addressContext extension -- http://addresscontext.mozdev.org/
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chrizoo
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Post by chrizoo »

Hi, thanks for your reply. I give my addresses out to trusted sources only and therefore I have never received a single spam message, so that's not a problem. (see below for further comments on spam)

It's actually quite a nice option and there are quite a lot of add-ins for Outlook that allow you to do just that : automatically add incoming+outgoing addresses (optionally in both cases of course).

It's nice because that allows you to automatically keep track of people when they change their email addresses. Be honest: who does check if the email address in the email matches the one in the address book EVERYTIME when a new email comes in ? (particularly if the address book used is an external one because of the fancier options like the photographs you can add in the Outlook address book for example)
Often the email reader does not even see the address of the sender, because by default Thunderbird displays the sender alias only, not the actual address.

So if, let's say, your friend sends you an email from "Peter Pan <peterpan@hotmail.com>", and then definitely switches to "Peter Pan <peterpan@yahoo.com>" you will never realize the change as you only see "Peter Pan" and consequently you will never update your address book. If you are not aware of that change for any reason (and there are hundreds of reasons : he lost your address or didn't include you in the warning or you overlooked his warning or you deleted it alongside with spam messages,etc.), now the trouble begins, because when picking his address from your address book, you will send him a mail to his old address <peterpan> that he won't ever be able read of course.
Now there are 100 of ways to loose contact if it's a friend who lives 1000 of kilometers away and of whom you only have his mail address: he lost your address, or you - too - change your address, or he stops writing because he thinks you have never written (your message disappeared in his old account), etc. etc. ....

The way I use that option is to automatically add all outgoing addresses to "collected addresses". From time to time I delete addresses that I don't want to keep and then I move all the rest to "my personal addresses" (my second address book in Thunderbird). Then I use the Thunderbird extension "Duplicate Contact Manager" to merge the new info to the existing contacts and then delete the duplicates. This only costs me ~5 minutes per month for ~500 contacts (because not each contact has changed) and I rather loose 5 min per month than some friends spread across the globe that I met when travelling.


Now as for your mentioning spam:
If people receive spam, they don't have to enable this option, but if they don't (as me), it's exactly as questionable or not questionable as "automatically adding all outgoing messages" to my address book. It's for the same purpose.
((If people receive spam on one address but have another address where they don't, it would of course be better if they could decide which address they want to include/exclude when "add all outgoing/incoming addresses". ))


So, as I said, if someone knows a way to change something in the settings or somewhere in a TB file, then please tell what I have to to change the behavior of this option from "outgoing" to "outgoig+incoming".
Thanks in advance
Last edited by chrizoo on March 26th, 2007, 8:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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DanRaisch
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Post by DanRaisch »

You missed my first statement. What you request is not possible in current versions of Thunderbird.

Also, have you reviewed the extension to which I provided a link in my first post?
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chrizoo
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Post by chrizoo »

... PS: Thanks for your link, I'll give it a try. That does not actually help me for what I want to do, but it is a step forward though. Thanks!
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DanRaisch
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Post by DanRaisch »

You're welcome.
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chrizoo
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Post by chrizoo »

Hi DanRaisch, thanks for your reply. We must have been writing at the same time ...

... yes, I have had a look concerning the extension you suggested. I will add it to my Thunderbird. I have not tried it yet but I read the webpage. As far as I can see, it can't automatically add incoming addresses. But it surely will help me a bit.

And I didn't miss your first statement, I only didn't interpret it correctly. I thought you meant one cannot choose "incoming addresses" in the TB GUI. I know this. But I thought it would be possible to modify something deeper in TB (modify a file somewhere etc.).

Thanks for your help DanRaisch!
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DanRaisch
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Post by DanRaisch »

And I've just found a post that suggests I was incorrect in writing that one can not collect incoming addresses. It seems there is a (to me) obscure setting that may do what you want.

Menu path Tools->Options->Advanced tab->General tab->Config Editor button. Enter "mail.collect_email_address_incoming" (wihtout the quotation marks) into the filter bar. Change the default setting of "False" to "True". This should result in the addresses from incoming messages being added to your address book.

Now, two caveats. I doubt (but don't know for certain) that there is any duplication check on this process so you may wind up with multiple entries for the same users if they write to you frequently. Secondly, I'm not sure if the target for the collected data will be the Personal Address Book or Collected Addresses, or if this is selectable in any way.
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chrizoo
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Post by chrizoo »

Oh, you don't know HOW HAPPY+THANKFUL YOU JUST MADE ME !!! ... jumping around out of joy ...
--> I will try that and than post here all my findings + results.
--> Could you please also send me a link to where you have found that post ? That would be very kind of you. (Of course I had done a search before posting but couldn't find anything).

1000 thanks,
chrizoo
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DanRaisch
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Post by DanRaisch »

You're quite welcome. Here's the link to the topic http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=534774
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chrizoo
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Post by chrizoo »

Dear DanRaisch,
many thanks for your link.

Thanks to your help, I was able to sort that out and as promised I am back to post my findings/results:
(1) "mail.collect_email_address_outgoing" reflects the status of options>composition>addressing>automatically add outgoing email addresses
(2) "mail.collect_email_address_incoming" does the SAME thing for INCOMING email addresses (true=collect), so it would actually be quite easy to add that to the options in the GUI
(3) "mail.collect_addressbook" indicates the address book that collects the addresses for BOTH options above. The address book is also choosen at options>composition>addressing. So the book you choose there will collect incoming and outgoing addresses if you set both options above to TRUE.

I have tried that, and it works perfectly.

1000 thanks again for your help !!!
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chrizoo
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Post by chrizoo »

PS: it appears that ...
... outgoing addresses are defined as email addresses of the mail recipients when you send a message
... incoming addresses are defined as the sender addresses of the emails you read (the address is added at the moment when the cursor is over the sender name in the second pane, so it's not enough that the email is in your inbox)
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chrizoo
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Post by chrizoo »

PPS: this function does not add duplicates ... GREAT !!!
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DanRaisch
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Post by DanRaisch »

I'm pleased to hear that that config entry performs as you wished. It just proves, again, that there are settings in that config editor that many/most users don't realize are there or don't understand well if they have found them. Thanks for confirming it's functionality.
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chrizoo
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Post by chrizoo »

Yes, exactly, I agree with you. Thanks to your help, this point is now clarified.

By the way, is there a place on the Internet (or in this forum), where these config entries are documented? I know, there are lots of different threads/posts that deal with config entries but they are all dispersed ... the idea would be that once a setting is documented, the knowledge is stored in one unique place, a library of some sort. In this way, one would have access immediately to the information he/she needs, instead of searching around in various threads for hours ...

Maybe this already exists?

Thanks again and kind regards, chrizoo
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