Ok the fundamental idea of mailing lists in Thunderbird was reexamined in the changing of the database used to store contacts

SO historically the mailing list contained the contact. If they appeared somewhere else, that was a different entry. In the new system contacts are links to contacts in the address book, so if you change the phone number from within the address list the base record is updates as that is what is in the address book, not another contact.

So you can drag and drop contacts between address books. You can drag and drop contact within an address book to a mailing list and they will appear there but the base record will still appear in the address book.v It also makes it possible for the same contact to be in multiple mailing lists, like congregation, deacons and Youth Club in a religious type context. Deleting an entry in a mailing list does not delete the contact, only their membership of the list.

If you can not drag contact between address books, or drag contacts within an address book to a list in that address book, I suggest you try restarting Thunderbird in Troubleshooting mode from the help menu as it works for me.

Matt, thanks for your quick response. I can drag a contact, or multiple contacts (so long as I make sure what I'm dragging doesn't include the target mailing list itself), from an address book to a mailing list *within that address book* but I'm afraid that doesn't help, or at least I can't see how it helps. I have a bunch of addresses, and I want to avoid the tedious, and error-prone, process of having to scroll through, find, and select each individual contact to drag them to the mailing list in which I need them to be.

The existing mailing lists are all within one address book. I could import the new addresses into that address book, but then they'd just be mixed in with all the existing addresses there and I'd be back to tedious and error prone. And I can import them into a new address book, where they'll be separate like I need them initially, and put them into a mailing list in that address book, but then I can't drag them from either that address book or that mailing list into a mailing list in another address book - back to the tedious again.

I get the idea of a mailing list being a view into an address book, rather than a separate set of contacts, and speaking as a coder, I might kinda like it - if I weren't having so much trouble with it as a user. But it seems very reasonable to want to import such a view from an outside file, and to be able to drag those views between address books, so long as the contacts in the view exist in the target address book. I can't be the only person who needs to verify and confirm batches of new addresses before adding them to existing mailing lists.

I can't be the only person who needs to verify and confirm batches of new addresses before adding them to existing mailing lists.

YOu might be getting close. With the restrictions most of the mail providers are bringing in with regards to volues of mail almost everyone with serious mailing list needs has moved to mailhouses. Even the Thunderbird project uses one. List I checked the project used the services of mailchimp

But for the purposes of verifying folk for inclusion, I would tend to use something like mailmerge for most of my group mailing needs and it works with the CSV file as well as address books and mailing lists. It also obviates the risks associated with the necessity placing the list in BCC instead of CC or to and breaching the European privacy laws by accident. But I have been using mail merge in one form or another since Word V2 for Windows and AmiPro came across my desk, in the 1980s I guess it was, to create personalized correspondence.