Address Book "Edit Distribution List" not working in Lion 10.7.2

Thanks that works for me as well

Nice fix -- thanks!

yep the work around from jstoner is the very one mentioned in the cnet review article above as option 2. Works perfectly.

This is a real problem that Apple has to fix. I have tried all of the "ways around" fixing this but nothing "sticks". It just keeps resorting to choosing an email it decides upon, rather than the email account you choose when editing the distribtuion list. You can only edit the distribution list if you take it off line and work from the Contacts on your local computer.... Apple, I hope you are reading these... Please help... frustrated... :-(

Yup, @Stoner has it right... That worked!!! Now I'm thinking I have to get high to figure things like this out. hehehe

I have what I suppose is a related issue. I can access the Edit Distribution List menu item, but changes don't stick.

I've set up several smart groups in my Address Book. Some of the contacts in those groups have multiple e-mail addresses so I to the Edit menu, select "Edit Distribution List...", and choose the address that should be used (click on the correct address to make it bold). However, those changes do not stick — when I use the group or look at the "Edit Distribution List..." again, the unselected addresses are still used.

"On My Mac" is the default in Address Book preferences. I haven't, yet, switched to iCloud (my iPhone is a 3G and can't use iOS 5.x) but do sync addresses to MobileMe.

I must be missing some key step. This same thing happened under Snow Leopard and is still around in 10.7.3. What might I be doing incorrectly? As others have said, this seems to be a major and persistent bug.

I just found what I think is the answer to my problem. According to the information given when you click the question mark icon on the "Edit Distribution List" window, "You can’t choose Smart Groups." Technically, you can choose a Smart Group and it appears that you are able to select which address to us. However, what Apple seems to mean is that any changes you make to a Smart Group don't work.

Still a serious bug!! This is not a feature.

And, changing the order of addresses for the contact doesn't seem to work either. In the several cases I checked, the desired address is listed first and the wrong address still shows up in the distribution list.

Please take a look at this thread. The message from arniemacprovided a simple, quick, and effective work-around:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3392117?start=0&tstart=0

If for some reason the thread becomes unavailable, the solution is described here:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20126108-263/address-book-distribution-list -editor-disabled-by-icloud/

Use option #2 for creating local distribution groups.

It works.

I had trouble updating my distribution list by adding a new member. It showed the new member in the Contacts application, but it would refuse to include the new person when attempting to send an email to the distribution list. Finally I went into Contacts, and RENAMED the contact list. This allowed the Mail program to see the new name. Frankly I don't know if this is a solid workaround. It seems like a bug in Lion (10.7.4).

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I was swimming for days from my Windows Vista machine to the MacBook air. I am exhausted from the conversion and took in a lot of salt water only to find that Mac ain't perfect. Outlook 2003 (otherwise known as Lookout) seems pretty robust and integrated. Oh well.....

@WibdowsRefugee1 While I cannot speak to the exact technical details on how this works I don't think what you encountered is a "bug". From my own experience when you change a group or distribution list in Address Book/Contacts it does not update immediately in Mail. It acts as if Mail pulls from some database that is separate from the main AB/Contacts app data and it doesn't update changes made to lists immediately.

Creating new lists and it appears changing the name seem to force the new data into Mail quicker. Perhaps there is a local Mail cache of these lists that just watch constantly for list names and don't refresh immediately otherwise? Either way you don't have to change the name of the list but it may take a bit for those changes to show up. You could try restarting both apps and see if that helps speed up the refresh as well.

I had this problem when I added only one contact to an e-mail list. The issue was that I hadn't fully added the e-mail address to the individual contact. It looked like I had, but the contact card was only listing a proposed e-mail address read from an e-mail. To me, it looked like the contact card had an e-mail properly listed, but it was not actually added to the contact card. The result of this was that while the contact was listed in my group, there was no e-mail address pulled into my To; box when I tried to e-mail the group. I had to go to the contact card and confirm the e-mail was correct.

Very hard to detect this error.