Address Books in Thunderbird

Thunderbird's Address Book is a place to store addresses you use frequently. "Collected Addresses" is a list of all the addresses to which you have sent messages.The end result is that once you have typed an address, you never have to type it again. Depending on how you have the options configured, when you start to type an address or nickname, Thunderbird will search your local address books and/or the Cornell Electronic Directory for matching entries.

Managing Your Address Book

Using Your Address Book

Collected Addresses

Address Book Options

Managing Your Address Book

To access your address book, click Address Book in Thunderbird's toolbar or, from Thunderbird's Tools menu select Address Book. At the left you'll see your Address Book, Collected Addresses, and the Cornell Directory.

To add an entry to your address book, highlight your address book, then click New Card in the toolbar.

Enter as much or as little information as you like; the minimum is a display name (which is whatever you want to call this entry) and an e-mail address. Click OK when you're done.

You can also create an entry for a group of names, called a list, for example, everyone in your work group.

To create a new list, highlight your address book (on the left) then click New List in the toolbar. Enter a list name. You can now add addresses in several ways: Type in an address by hand Type in the first few characters of a name, nickname, display name, or e-mail address. If that appears as an entry in your Address Book or Collected Addresses, Thunderbird will show you the matching entries. Close the Mailing List window, then drag existing names shown on the right onto the list icon in the left pane.

Notes about Lists

• You cannot nest one list inside another.
• If you address a message in the To field using a list name, all of the recipients of the message will see all of the individual e-mail addresses that make up the list. To prevent this from happening, use the drop-down to change To to Bcc

Using Your Address Book

There are several ways to use the entries in your address book. The easiest way for many people is, when composing a message to send, type a few characters from the name or e-mail address you want. Thunderbird will look for matching entries in your Address Book and Collected Addresses. (You can control where Thunderbird looks for matches through an option setting.)

Another way to use the Address Book is to click on Contacts in the toolbar of the message you are composing. In the Address Book drop-down list, select where you want Thunderbird to look. The entries for that book will appear below. If the list of entries is long, type a few characters of the entry you want to find into the Search for box. Thunderbird then shows you only the entries that match what you typed. To add that entry to the list of recipients for this message, double-click on the entry or click Add to To or Add to Cc.

Yet another way is to click Address Book in the toolbar before starting a new message. If the list of entries is long, type a few characters of the entry you want to find into the Search box at the upper-right. Thunderbird then shows you only the entries that match what you typed. To compose a new message addressed to that entry, click Write in the toolbar.

Collected Addresses

Collected Addresses is a special address book that Thunderbird maintains without any effort on your part. It is made up of every e-mail address to which you've sent a message, whether in To, Cc, or Bcc. (You can control how Collected Addresses works through an option setting.)

As installed, Collected Addresses is a convenience in that, once you've typed in an address, you'll never have to type in that address again. As you start to type it, Thunderbird will find it for you.

Address Book Options

Tell Thunderbird where to store addresses you type into messages

From Thunderbird's Tools menu, select Options, then click the Composition icon, then the Addressing tab.

If you remove the check from the Automatically add outgoing e-mail addresses checkbox, Thunderbird won't remember the addresses.

If you leave that checkbox marked, you can use the drop-down list to select which address book the addresses will be store in. We suggest you leave it set to Collected Addresses.

Tell Thunderbird where to look for matching entries when you start to type a name or address into the To field

From Thunderbird's Tools menu, select Options, then click the Composition icon, then the Addressing tab.

The two checkboxes under Address Autocompletion determine Thunderbird's actions. "Local Address Books" includes your personal address book, the "collected addresses," and any other address books you've created.

Tell Thunderbird what information to display in the address book, and in what order

You can choose which columns are displayed when you are viewing your address books. You can also change the order in which the columns appear. The choices you make will affect all address books.

To choose columns, click on the icon which appears at the right edge of the column headings. You'll be shown a drop-down menu of columns; the headings with checkmarks are the ones that are currently shown in your mail folders. Select an unchecked heading to add it to the display or select a checked heading to remove it from the display.

To reorder the columns, just drag a column heading to the desired location.

You can sort the entries by any column by clicking on a column heading. Click again to reverse the order.