Selecting a smart group in Apple Mail results in duplicate addresses

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Level 1

1 points

Selecting a smart group in Apple Mail results in duplicate addresses

I created a Smart Group in Apple Contacts (v8.0) that contains 15 email addresses. I double-checked the members of that list by selecting the Smart Group name in Contacts and all 15 are listed. No more, no less.

However, when I select that Smart Group in Apple Mail (v7.2), all 15 addresses populate the [To: box] PLUS duplicates of 8 of the addresses on the list.

Does anyone know why this happens?

OS X Mavericks 10.9.2

====== UPDATE======

I just now created a "normal" group in Apple Contacts using the same contact list as the "Smart Group", then deleted the "Smart Group", then selected the "normal" group in an Apple Mail [To: box] and it worked like it should have in the first place. No duplicates.

What is the difference between "Groups" and "Smart Groups"?

Message was edited by: cornguy.rln

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Mar 9, 2014 8:25 AM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,786 points

Mar 9, 2014 9:15 AM in response to cornguy.rln

The difference is a Smart Group finds things that match the criteria set for the Smart Group. In a regular group, you specify the items that are part of the group.

As to why you see that behavior, I'm not sure. With Mavericks, Smart Groups weren't working well with Mail. 10.9.2 seems to have fixed some of those problems. I don't see the issue you describe, though.

Is there anything different about those 8 contacts? Maybe multiple email addresses?

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Answer 2

Mar 12, 2014 12:45 PM in response to cornguy.rln

Having the same problem if I type in the smart group name in a new email. However if I click on the smart group within contacts and select "Send email to "smart group name"" this seems to work well.

However even in this last case, it seems that if a contact has two emails it will use both emails when sending an email.

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Answer 3

Mar 19, 2014 5:11 AM in response to cornguy.rln

Hey Cornguy— Do you have a Google (or other) contacts account as well as your iCloud or default local Apple contacts account? It might be that those 8 contacts are in both of your contacts accounts.

If you have the same contact listed in multiple accounts (e.g. Uncle Fred has a card in both your iCloud AND your Google contacts), those separate cards can be "linked", and appear as only one card in your contacts app. Linked cards have a "cards" heading just above the notes field, and you'll be able to see which accounts each of those cards is stored in.

When sending mail to a smart group by writing the name of the group in a new mail message, mail seems to pull in the necessary information from both linked cards, resulting in duplicates. However, as Petergales states, the "send email to [smart group]" seems to work well. Drove me nuts a few times before I figured that out.

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Answer 4

MpPierce

Level 1

4 points

Jan 4, 2016 6:47 PM in response to Jacob Sam-La Rose

Yep, that's the issue. I just had this situation happen and was only able to fix it by eliminating the matching criteria from all of the cards except one. Since I was searching for a specific tag within the notes field, this worked ok. If you're matching on some more general criteria, however, this probably won't help.

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