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Since a recent Thunderbird update, sending to a contact list does not work?

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When I forward an email to a contact list "Team" ( a list of 5 valid email addresses), the resulting address is displayed as {Team <"Team">} and when I click send, I get the following message 'Team <"Team"> is not a valid e-mail address because it is not of the form user@host. You must correct it before sending the e-mail.' This only started happening after a recent update to Thunderbird

When I forward an email to a contact list "Team" ( a list of 5 valid email addresses), the resulting address is displayed as {Team <"Team">} and when I click send, I get the following message 'Team <"Team"> is not a valid e-mail address because it is not of the form user@host. You must correct it before sending the e-mail.' This only started happening after a recent update to Thunderbird

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There is a bug similar to what you described, which has been reported as Bug #1060901. If you have an account on Bugzilla, please consider voting for that issue.

Several other people have sent in similar support requests to yours, noting this happened after they upgraded to version 31.1.

The exact error message is: XXXX is not a valid e-mail address because it is not of the form user@host. You must correct it before sending the e-mail.

This happens in Thunderbird 31.1.0 when your mailing list description includes several words separated by spaces. Even though you cited a test that didn't include spaces, perhaps the real names you are using do include spaces?

Although not ideal, these workarounds should let you use your mailing lists until a proper fix is implemented:

  • While composing an email open the address book and select the list you are trying to send to, highlight all the names in the list and drag them to the To: box. This uses your existing data without modifying it.
  • Replacing the blanks " " between the words in such lists' descriptions with an underscore "_". This requires modifying your mailing list(s) description(s).
  • Downgrade to a previous version and disable automatic updates (Windows)
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I am having exactly the same issue, even after upgrading to 3.1.1 and then 3.1.2 Mailing list names are all just one word, no spaces and all addresses in the lists are fine. Mailing lists worked fine until 3.1.1 for me.