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

Question

Level 1

4 points

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

I have been told by people in my "Groups" that I am sending to the wrong e-mail addresses. I checked and sure enough so I went to edit the distribution list for that group and it's greyed out. It worked prior to this update. My wifes is still using 10.7.1 and edit didtribution list is not greyed out.....anyone having the same issue or any ideas where it is now or how to re-enable it....or is it just broken? Also I am contented into iCloud.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2), iCloud

Posted on Oct 14, 2011 11:21 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 14, 2011 10:39 PM in response to neilberg

I'm having the same issue. Edit>Edit Distribution List is just grayed out, and there is no way to enable it.

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Answer 2

neilberg Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 15, 2011 12:18 AM in response to neilberg

I was on the phone with Apple Care for a number of hours and they went through this and that ending up grabbing some data and sending it off to engineering. I asked if anyone, there, in support had updated to 10.7.2 and none had....unfortunate because that would have told us broken or not in a couple of key strokes. Scanning this list I found another with the same issue earlier last morning. Hopefully they can point me in the right direction if it's hidden or turned off somewhere else. It's a great feature and I use it all the time.

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Answer 3

Oct 15, 2011 4:49 AM in response to neilberg

Same problem here - very frustrating.

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Answer 4

rcosby

Level 1

9 points

Oct 15, 2011 6:02 AM in response to neilberg

I have the same issue but I noticed in Mail I can mouse over each name and I get a dropdown that lets me change the email address by checking a different one. It doesn't appear to "stick" but it gives you a way to check them BEFORE hitting the send button.

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Answer 5

neilberg Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 15, 2011 8:41 AM in response to neilberg

In mail you have always been able to mouse over individual addresses and choose but is a "one of" and very slow. If the distribution list is large and many have multiple addresses....well it's not something that you would want to do more than once. I have continued to look for an alternative but I feel it's broke and needs to be fixed. I attached some of this thead for Apple Care so hopefully......fingers crossed......sooner than later.

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Answer 6

neilberg Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 15, 2011 1:50 PM in response to neilberg

To add to my original post.... My wifes OS was 10.7.1 and I just finished the update to 10.7.2 and signed into iCloud. I first transfered iCal but left Address Book. When I went into Address Book and checked the Distribution List it was not greyed out. Next I transfered Address Book to iCloud and checked Dist List and it was greyed out. Next I removed Address Book from iCloud (leaving a copy of it on the computer), restarted AB and checked to see if DL was still greyed and it was not. So no fixes here but if you want the functionality of the DL you could turn off Address Book in iCloud temp until they come up with a fix. Important: if you turn off Address Book from iCloud be sure to leave a copy on your puter and of course before doing any of this make a Archive Backup of Address Book. I guess at this point it'll just be a waiting game until a fix comes out. Cheers, Neil

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Answer 7

Oct 15, 2011 4:58 PM in response to neilberg

Oh my - I just tried this, and sure enough, the ability to Edit Distribution Lists was back. Except ALL of my groups lost ALL of their contacts! Luckily, they were still in my "All Contacts" list. Luckier still, when I turned Address Book back on in iCloud, I merged the contacts, and all my Distribution Lists came back stocked with contacts as before - but alas, Edit Distribution Lists was once again greyed out...

That's a pretty big bug - and replicable. I hope they fix it soon.

-Paul

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Answer 8

Oct 17, 2011 7:11 AM in response to neilberg

Same here. Most of my emails are sent using groups and this is a big issue.

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Answer 9

Oct 17, 2011 8:24 AM in response to xxJohn Galtxx

I am also having issues when trying to create a new group.

I create it and add contacts, but when I try to use it in an email it does not populate any addresses in the To:.

I even tried to add contacts to an existing list and the did not work. The original contacts show up, but not the new ones.

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Answer 10

Oct 17, 2011 10:27 AM in response to neilberg

I was caught with this bug as well. Although not a proper fix, it should be pointed out that the distribution list now uses the first email address in the contact's card. By copy-pasting to swap the email addresses you can then get it sorted for some of your groups. However, if you have one person in multiple groups, with a different email addy in each group, you are still out of luck. And some groups are dozens or hundreds of people, so this is not a great use of time. I definitely see this as an iCloud bug as the Groups are now listed as 'iCloud' in Address Book.

BTW - my other pet peeve is why there is no easy way to reorder email addresses in Address Book. Having to copy/paste so that 'work' emails can be above 'home' emails (for consisteny) is annoying but has been an issue since the beginning.

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Answer 11

neilberg Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 17, 2011 11:49 AM in response to neilberg

Spacecadet, I had noticed that the address used was the first on the contact card but it never dawned on me to reorder them. For me that was the perfect temp fix (time consuming for sure). Hats off to you. Thanks, Neil 🙂

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Answer 12

Oct 17, 2011 12:20 PM in response to neilberg

I can select Edit Distribution List, and it appears after about a minute (3,500 contacts). But, when I try to switch the content to be edited from email to address, Address Book just hangs. Boo, hiss.

Noogies all around to the Address Book team.

And wedgies for the new UI.

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Answer 13

Oct 17, 2011 1:15 PM in response to Jacques Cornell

Jacques, are you sure you're using Address Book from iCloud? (In iCloud System Preferences, Contacts is checked) If you are, then the rest of us have something wrong with our systems...

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Answer 14

Oct 17, 2011 2:20 PM in response to paul bresciani

Paul,

Actually, this was on a user account for which I have never set up either MobileMe or iCloud. I've just tried it in my main user account (iCloud active), and Edit Distribution List is grayed out. Had to generate a mailing list for an event, so I booted from an archived clone of Snow Leopard that I made just before upgrading to Lion.

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Answer 15

neilberg Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 17, 2011 5:10 PM in response to neilberg

Just something to add....while working with Apple Care we created a new account and it had identical results as did my wifes iMac. So broken software it is as far as I'm concerned. When I did a re-order of the addresses all was well until it sync'd with iCloud and then it just reverted back to the original mess. So if a distribution list is important I would suggest turning of iCloud re-editing your distribution list and leaving it that way until they come up with a fix. It is also important that you have a backup of your address book prior to iCloud....

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