you must use the recipients email address to send mail. there is no option to use anything else as the receiving server will have no idea who "mom" is only witchwoman@gmail.com.

Thanks for your time Matt. I understand. What I meant tho is that I like to see only the name or nom de guerre so that the address line isn't cluttered with 20 email addresses in addition to addressee even tho recipients can see invisible addresses by hovering cursor. I now know that since Thunderbird inception the option was suppressed. I can live with it.

But my consternation remains for the fact individual To: lines must be used for multiple addresses. That's a waste of time following process and is cumbersome and archaic to have 20 address lines if needed. The only response I would like to see to this issue is if or when that feature is changed. Yes I do know how to use contact list for multiple contacts and that is a viable alternative for grabbing names.

Thanks again.

you can paste your 20 addresses into a to line separated by a comma and it will work now.

Thanks again Matt for your time and effort. I'm going to let this matter rest. I can survive with things as they are. But I can't for the life of me figure out your fix using pasting. My address book doesn't allow copy/paste and the To: line protocol remains when I grab multiple addressees. Apparently this isn't an issue with others so I rest my case.

Peace and pleasant roads.

It is an issue with many others who having seen the all-on-one-line model elsewhere, assume it is a universal constant and don't seem prepared to consider the possible advantages of any other system.

I trialled another email client which did the traditional thing of placing all the addressees in one line. It was painful to scroll to see who had been included, and removing one address took some very patient and accurate selection and use of the delete key, as it was all too easy to backstep into a previous address and damage it too.

OTOH, I am having trouble understanding your complaints about Thunderbird's one-line-per-address system. It is trivial to add or remove an address or change it from one category to another. I want to see full addresses so that with correspondents who have multiple addresses, I know for certain which address I'm using.

Thanks Zenos. I can live with things as they are. I appreciate all the work you folks expend on myriad issues. Any time we are exposed to new systems there is a learning curve. But having said that, sometimes the new user may see things that may not have been obvious with creation. Regardless, as I told Matt, I put this to rest. Thanks again y'all. Snaggletooth.