Want Display name in addr book to be First Last. Defaults to e-mail addr unless I type in John Doe. How to fix globally?
When I send out e-mails to a group of people, I want the header to be First Last name. In some of my contacts Thunderbird has defaulted to placing the e-mail address in the "Display Name" box. I have typed in First name in First name box and Last Name in Last name box. Do I now have to go through and type in First name and last name in the "Display " box to have these show up correctly?
I want it to look like this: John Doe <jdoe@email.ca> or just John Doe
instead of jdoe@email.ca <jdoe@email.ca>
I have the View "Show Name As" set to Last, First because I want the last names to be in alphabetical order.
All Replies (4)
If you have email addresses in the display name box then you need to fix this.
How do I fix it and why did Thunderbird put the e-mail address in there?
How did they get there? Typed in by hand, transferred from messages, imported?
Most issues related to importing of address book data come from some mistake made in selecting which fields to import.
If the addresses came from email messages, then If you don't tell Thunderbird the first and last names it can make an educated guess from the display name included in a message. If there is no display name then it may well pop the whole email address or the local part into the "display name" field.
I have no idea how the e-mail addresses got into the "Display Name" box. I did NOT type them in. I didn't import these messages. They did not come from e-mail messages.
Recently when working on the Address Book - all the messages ended up in one Address Book and disappeared from all the others that I had set up eg. Scrabble, Exercise Group, etc. I do not recall what I was doing at the time this happened - perhaps trying to export all address books. If I set up a new contact with typing First Name and Last Name in appropriate boxes, TB automatically puts First Last in the Display box. Then, without closing the "new Contact" window, if I delete all of those fields and then type in First Last, TB puts nothing in the Display box- unless I uncheck "Always prefer display name over message header" I want the Display name to show when I get an e-mail from someone in my address book