Address Book - Default email address?

Question

Level 1

5 points

Address Book - Default email address?

Situation: I have a person in Adress Book with multiple email addresses.

This entry is NOT a member of any Group in Address Book.

1. How can i use Address Book to (easily) see the default email address Mail will use for this person (WITHOUT going to Mail)

2. How do i change/ set this default using Address Book?

The old Claris Emailer app from Apple had an arrow pointing to the default email address - sure would be nice to have something similar in AB

Note: I know this can be done at the Group level for persons who are members of Groups in Address Book using "Edit>Edit Distribution List"

Posted on Oct 20, 2005 8:49 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 21, 2005 1:34 AM in response to raka

As far as I can tell, the default email address Mail uses from Address Book is the first (top) email address that appears in that entry. So if you have "Work", followed by "Home", then it will use the Work address.

At least that's been my experience.

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Answer 2

raka Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 26, 2005 11:51 PM in response to John Togasaki

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. (and, unfortunately, even if it did, it would still be a cumbersom process to move addresses to be in the 1st position, since there is no command to do so)

I have an Address Book entry w/ 3 email addresses.

- when i type the name in the "To:" field in Mail, it selected SECOND address

- when i insted click on the Address Book icon (labeled "Address" in Mail, it selected the THIRD address!

Anyone else know how to accomplish what i mentioned in my initial post?

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Answer 3

Oct 27, 2005 7:03 AM in response to raka

Hello there... dis oes not exactly relate to this topic but I just wanted to find out if there is a way of getting an apple e-mail other than .Mac email accounts as I'm trying to set up a new e-mail account for myself..

Thanks..

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Answer 4

Oct 31, 2005 12:37 PM in response to raka

I guess we both need to describe what we're doing a little better. I thought you were talking about dragging and dropping an address book entry into your To: or Cc: field in Mail. When I do that, it always seems to take the first entry. At least for me.

When you type in the name in the To: field, it looks in its previously sent cache first, as well as in Address Book. So Mail is probably getting the address from the cache.

When you click on the Address Book icon, it will bring up the Address Book popup. You then select an entry in the popup. Depending on where you click, you decide which email address to use. If you click on the name of person, it seems to always pick the first email address. If you click on one of the other email addresses, it will pick that one.
At least that's what I could tell from experimentation. Anyway, the address that will be used when you do it this
way is clearly selected before you click the To: or Cc: button.

I also took a quick look at the developer docs, and there's definitely a programmatic way to set the primary field (whether it's a phone number, street address, or email address) in Address Book, but I couldn't find any mention in any documentation about how to set it through the user interface.

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Answer 5

raka Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 20, 2005 5:01 PM in response to John Togasaki

has anyone figured out how to do this yet?

the problem is i have many entries where i have a secondary email address that i only use in exceptional instances, but have no way of forcing Mail to always use my preferred/ default address (unless i specify otherwise)

also, when i move a lot of individuals into a Group & do a Group Email - i would like to predetermine the email address to be selected for the group email

(when Mail shows me the available email addresses, it is of not too much help, since it doesn't say "which" email address is which

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Answer 6

Dec 24, 2005 10:10 PM in response to raka

Here's what you're looking for I think.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=275644

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Answer 7

Dec 29, 2005 8:34 PM in response to Owen Jones

Hi Owen,

Thanks, but if you read raka's first post again, he specifically said he didn't want to use groups.

I had suggested that the first address was the default (works for me), but he also said that it didn't work that way for him.

John.

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Answer 8

Ian Sen

Level 1

33 points

Feb 27, 2006 2:39 PM in response to John Togasaki

i am encountering exactly the same issue. i have browsed "address book help" but can't seem to find a solution.

i do not wish to create groups. for any given individual: i wish to assign a specific email address as the default email address so that when i type in their name into the "to:" section of a new email it is the default email address that is automatically suggested.

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