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How can I email people and not have their full "name" show up?

Ok this question will be difficult to comprehend and I really DOUBT there is a solution but for those of you that know everything about opperating systems, you're my kings!


OK SO! I have a business...and when I add people to my phonebook (thus adding them through the cloud to my address book) I save them as P.name.whereWEmet.blabla - that way if I meet someone at Starbucks I save them as P.Joe.Starbucks.Brooklyn and if I do a search for Brooklyn I find them...


HERE'S THE PROBLEM:


When I email them, I open up my MAIL application and start typing P.Joe.Starbucks.Brooklyn and when they recieve the email that's what they see. I just want on their end to show "Joe"


One of the solutions is a manual one, I want an AUTOmatic one. I have to click on the drop down menu over their name, click "EDIT ADDRESS" and change it.


QUESTION:


How can I get either JUST THEIR EMAIL TO SHOW UP ON THEIR END OR just their first name without all the codes such as P.?


If you have a solution, you deserve an award!

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Oct 3, 2012 3:35 PM

Reply
17 replies

Oct 8, 2012 10:17 AM in response to silvergc

I agree - Macs are not magical beings that know what I want for breaskfast the next day or what colour shirt I should wear for my next business meeting but it would be nice if there was a way that I can input something like "If I log into my computer at 2:01am then for breaskfast I want the sausage.." I'm hoping you realize that was an analogy...I just had a protein shake.


What I'm saying is "is there a way to have a SPECIFIC name that I SELECT to AUTOMATICALLY every time I email THAT SPECIFIC name to change from P.John.Starbucks.Brooklyn to "John"


Thanks in advance for your response 🙂

Oct 8, 2012 10:22 AM in response to kurolap

You can't change how it will appear on the recipient's end. That's up to their email client and how it can display email addresses and not something you can control. Some email applications, as the Mail app in Mac OS X does, can show a "smart" address, pulling the user's real name from the contact database, but not all email clients can do that. It's up to what the recipient's computer can do.


Regards.

Oct 9, 2012 5:58 AM in response to kurolap

When you enter "John" <P.John.Starbucks.Brooklyn.com> into the Mail To: field, Mail will remember this address that you typed for all future mail compose sessions.


The next time you type the letters “Jo,” mail will pop up a list of choices to pick from. You could select the above address again without having to type it, or if you wanted to send to a friend "Joe", it would offer that address among the choices.


Automated enough?

Oct 9, 2012 8:40 AM in response to kurolap

No, that's not how Internet email works. Emails contain and go only by the address shown in the account on the recipient's email server. An email address that was changed from "P.John.Starbucks.Brooklyn at wherever.com"to just "John" by the sender's email application or server would never get delivered, and the Internet email protocols do not allow a "real name" to go along with the address; that's just not part of the specification.


So again, this is not something that you have within your control.


Regards.

Oct 11, 2012 8:18 AM in response to varjak paw

varjak paw wrote:


That will not affect how the address is shown to the recipient, which is what kurolap wants to have happen.

Exactly my point. The nickname will not affect how the recipient sees the message, so kurolap can put his code string there without it being visible to the recipient.


kurolap, please check my understanding of your request:

You want to put "P.Joe.Starbucks.Brooklyn" somewhere in a contact card such that you can type this in as an email recipient and/or search for the contact by a portion of it, but have the recipient see only his email address (and maybe his name) when he gets the mail.


My test:

I added "mywife" as a nickname to my wife's contacts card.

I started a new message and typed "mywife" into the address field.

After a couple of letters, Mail figured out who I meant and slugged in her information.

The reulting message looked to her as if I had started with her name or email address.

A search of the raw source of the message showed that the string "mywife" did not appear anywhere in the message header or text, so her email reader could not display it to her.


Of course, if I am misunderstanding your request, this may not be the right solution. It also may not be the right solution if there is some unstated reason why need to put your code string into the name field of the contact.

How can I email people and not have their full "name" show up?

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