Mail fails to recognize names from address book

Open the address book pane within the Mail application. See if the contacts there match what's actually in address book.

Are you using iCloud and if so, do you have other accounts enabled for AB with different sets of contacts?

Open the iCloud preferences and uncheck Contacts in the list. Choose to delete contacts from the computer.

Open Mail (if it's already open, quit and reopen). Check the address book within Mail and it should be empty of contacts along with AB.

Recheck contacts in the iCloud preferences. Your contacts should reappear in AB. Quit and restart Mail and check the AB pane and contacts should appear again.

This should rebuild the database files for AB and AB in Mail. Really about the only thing I can think of to do.

Doing the above usually will clear problems.

Try this:

Quit Mail. In the Finder, select Go, then Go to Folder and paste:

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb

Move the AddressBook-v22.abcddb file to the trash. Open Mail and see if that helps.

What's strange to me is why Mail is asking you to add any contacts to AB. Do you have some 3rd party add-on to Mail or AB to atuomatically add contacts to AB?

I know you can have a Yahoo account automatically add new contacts to AB, but it's not an option within the Mail application.

Mail shouldn't care what another person list your name as, providing they sent to the correct email address.

What I would suggest to see if a problem lies within your user account is to create a new user account on the computer for testing.

Log into that user and create the Mail account there. Sign into iCloud and check the contacts also so the AB will be populated with your contacts.

See if it works there. If it does, at least we will know if there is something to fix within your user Library.

OK. I understand a little better now. If anything is different in the contact name (even if the email address is the same), it doesn't show "Show Contact" in the dropdown like you said. You get "Add to Address Book" or "Copy Address" options.

This is the same on mine, but it isn't causing problems. I have many contacts that send under different names than what I have in AB. But the application does recognize the address as beign in my AB. I have rules set to change the text color of AB contacts. These contacts with different names still get recognized and rules get applied to them even though they show a different name.

Also tried the search field. As long as the name appears in either in the name or address field, the search works fine also.

So, I understand that what you see is similar or the same as what I'm seeing, but is this actually causing you a problem? I can understand if you are constantly adding address from mail messages and not sure if you have them or not.

You can set text message color in a rule like this:

All incoming messages from your AB will be colored per your choice. You should put this rule ahead of others in the rule list.

Note that rules only apply to incoming messages. Any other messages already downloaded can be applied manually by selecting the messages, right click and choose apply rules.

You're right. Only works on messages recieved from. This won't work in the header field with multiple addresses.

Possibly since Mountain Lion is moving more toward the way iOS devices work, there may be some changes there.

We'll see.

Wow! I am so glad to find someone else who is experiencig the same problem and is as frustrated about it as I am. The one difference is that both my OS 10.5.8 system and my iOS 5.1.1 iPhone both exhibit the same problem.

I have found this situation most often occurs when I initially receive an email from a new contact BEFORE I had added them to my Address Book. The next time I receive an email from them I still only see their email address in the column view but their name is displayed in the window with the message body (sorry, hard to explain; look at the attached screen shot). As mentioned previously, this happens both on my MacBook Pro and my iPhone.

I would love to find a way to have the senders name appear in both locations not just in the message body!

Also experiencing exactly the same problem under Mountain Lion / Mail 6.0 (1486). The contact's e-mail is linked to a contact, but under a different name. Mail refuses to use the contact's name and uses the name defined by the sender.