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Level 2

192 points

Set a preferred e-mail address?

If a contact has more than one e-mail address, how do I set their "preferred" e-mail address?

I know that one solution is to simply use that preferred address when you send an e-mail to that person, and Mail will remember that you did that. Unfortunately, that's not a great solution: sometimes I mail to someone's "exceptional" e-mail address, then the next time I mail to them, I forget to set it back. I'd like the exception to be just that--an exception--and use the preferred address all the time, unless I specifically override it.

Any way to do this?

Thanks.

G5 Dual 2.5 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Jul 10, 2006 11:54 AM

18 replies

GregM Author

Level 2

192 points

Jul 12, 2006 12:26 PM in response to R C-R

Glad it helped. And your mention of Mail Preferences got me thinking a bit. I looked and found an option for "Smart Addresses." By turning it off, Mail now always displays the e-mail address along with the name in the address bar. So while it's not exactly the solution I was looking for, it does at least let me do a sanity check on all of the e-mail addresses I use to make sure they're the ones I want to use.

Thanks.

Jul 13, 2006 6:18 AM in response to GregM

Move the email addresses in your Address Book that you don't want Mail to pick up for autofill to the 'Notes' field in your Address book. Mail shouldn't pick up on them on therefore should only show the one email you want.

A bit time consuming if you have a lot of entries to edit, but it should be a one time thing and then you don't have to wait when addressing emails.

Good luck!

Oct 6, 2006 12:42 PM in response to Merged Content 1

I have found a solution. First you need to delete the entry in the Previous Recipients list.

At the Mail.app menu bar, go to Window and select Previous Recipients.

A previous recipient already entering in the Address Book will have a vCard icon to the left of the name or email address.

Remove the offending email address.

Then go to Address Book and make sure the correct email address is first.

I stole part of this hint from Allan Sampson's post here...

http://discussions.apple.com/post!reply.jspa?messageID=2716589

Set a preferred e-mail address?