Thunderbird has Address Books and those address books can have mailing lists inside of them. You can load a mailing list into and address field. You cannot load an address book into that field.

I have four address books: Personal Address Book; Collected Addresses which Thunderbird created, and two of my own, Daily Image and Daily Image Lite. The two Daily Image address books contain the names of the folks who want to receive the daily mailing(s). For as long as I can remember, I have been typing my email address into the To: line and either Daily Image, or Daily Image Lite into the BCC: line. This has resulted in my name appearing in the To: line and the the name of the respective address book in the BCC: line. The idea of the address books was to preclude having to type in hundreds of names individually. Instead, just typing the address book which allows for all in that list to be handled at once.

Perhaps I am not using the correct terminology but what I want to do is use a folder of names i.e, "Daily Image" address book to preclude my having to type them all in one at a time.

dave

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-create-and-use-mailing-lists-thunderbird

I've been there and followed these instructions [Via a new Write message] which currently do not work but which ALWAYS worked prior to loosing my address books yesterday. In the past I would simply type either Daily Image or Daily Image Lite on the BCC: line and I would get Daily Image <Daily Image> or Daily Image Lite <Daily Image Lite>. Now that doesn't happen and I get a single address from the Personal Address Book. I've been using this approach daily for the past 10 years; just last night it ceased to work after having had the two address books simply disappear and reloading (importing) the back up copies.

I did nothing to this XP box I used for mail between sending out mail on Monday evening and having the two address books disappearing on Tuesday sometime. I updated Thunderbird today (Wednesday) to the latest release and rebooted. None of that helps. I've changed nothing else.

I must be missing something obvious but I can't determine what that might be. Do I need to do something to the two address books to render them functional?

dave

I have never seen you be able to enter the name of an address book in an address field of a message and have that work. A mailing list name yes. Address book no. The instructions for a mailing list are pretty straight forward. The contacts added to the list must be in the address book the list is created in.

Thanks. I just recreated the mailing lists and that solves the problem but doesn't explain why I couldn't import the exported mailing lists and have them work. Bottom line is i now have it working.

Thank you for your time.  ;-)

dave

You can import address books but not mailing lists.

I understand that. My Daily Image and Daily Image Lite address books are the mailing list, i.e., each is a sub-set of addresses from the Personal Address book. I export both Daily Image address books regularly as back ups. In the past I could import the backups and they functioned as expected, i.e, I could type those names in the BCC line and see them appear. For whatever reason that stopped working. However, as I mentioned in my last reply, I've recreated them and now all is working. I still don't know what went wrong and that is of some concern, but I'm back working and for now I'm satisfied.

Thanks for all your efforts; much appreciated.  ;-)

dave