What do you mean by "list"? Thunderbird has things called Mailing Lists but I suspect you're talking about a regular address book such as Personal Address Book. If you're double-clicking addresses with white stars in the email header pane then try a single click. If they are in the body of an email message, try a right-click. I don't know of any specification for what a double click should do.

"All Addresses" is not a real address book. It is a virtual address book, a compendium of all your real address books. It is provided principally to make searching easier, and you can't add Contacts to it. It you do succeed in removing a Contact from it, that Contact will also disappear from the real address book it is actually stored in.

I am talking about adding contacts to a list under my Personal Contact Lists, such as HHRA Group. I go to add a contact and it goes under "All Addresses" but does not go into that Group list. If I try to move a contact from the "All Addresses" by dragging and dropping, I may get one of three things: 1) I may get the contact added okay, but when I go to add another the same way, another contact may end up deleted 2) I may get three of the same contact in the Group list when dragging and dropping, or 3) I may not get any change at all in the list. And, I can add contacts to the "All Addresses" list without any problem. I just cannot add them to other lists, NOR can I drag and drop them into any "Address List" under Personal Lists or All Addresses List without having either the duplicate/triplicate additions or no addition at all, or if it does add the contact, another contact disappears.

I guess what I said above about All Address Books hasn't been understood.

A Mailing List is a subset of the address book in which it is stored. All Address Books is not a real address book and so therefore cannot store Mailing LIsts.

So if you want to create a Mailing List, open the particular address book (e.g. Personal Address Book) in which you want to create your Mailing List.

If you add a Contact to a Mailing List and that Contact is not in the same address book as the Mailing List, a new Contact will be created in the host address book. This because a Mailing List can only hold Contacts known to its parent address book.

So, you open address book "family" and create a Mailing List for the bowling club. You add your brother to this Mailing List. He of course is already listed in "family". Then you go to your address book "friends" and add your friend Joe to the bowling club list. But the bowling club Mailing List is in "family", not "friends" and to add Joe it needs to find him in "family". He isn't there, so it creates an entry in "family" for Joe. All Address Books now sees two entries for Joe, one (the original) in "friends" and the new one in "family".

Yes, this stinks because Joe isn't family, but you can't create a Mailing List that contains both your brother and Joe without this kind of confusion. But that's why you're seeing duplicates in All Address Books.

It is recognized that the Address Book has many problems and I have read of plans to re-write it to make it more useful.

Personally, I lump many of my Contacts together all in one address book and use the Organisation field to group them. So I can enter "family" for the Organisation and I can sort on Organisation to collect all the "family" entries together. This means that should I want to create a Mailing List including both friends and family, I can do so because they are all stored in Personal Address Book.

I do use separate address books for personal vs business contacts, because it's unlikely I'll ever want to combine members of these two address books into a common Mailing List.

If I were running a club, I think I'd create a specific address book for the club. If there was any overlap with other address books, such as a family member also being in the club, I'd just tolerate the duplication. I might use the Display Name or Nickname to tell which is which. I'd also use the MoreFunctionsForAddressBook add-on to associate that particular address book with the account I use for club communications, and I'd use the Folder Account add-on to connect that particular folder with club communications. Finally, a Mailing List containing all the club members, created in the club address book, would be used to simplify the addressing of club circulars.