Major address book overhaul - how to get my sort order back
Hello dear Mozilla (or should I say Thunderbird) crew and community,
After some twelve years of using Thunderbird (TB) on an extensive scale I decided to finally move over from MS Outlook (OL) (and Windows) all the way. Two weeks ago I started converting my major offline mail boxes (5000+ emails) from OL to TB (using export-to-MSG-files + convert-files to-EML + import-to-TB). Everything goes as planned and flawless, so far. I also was able to export/import my address book (contacts list) into TB version 91.10 without any problem. Today I accepted an upgrade to version 102.3. It looks good, I like the color support on the folders and the sleek interface. But when I open my address book I don't see how to order my contact list by 'Bijnaam' (the dutch field name; 'Nickname' I guess it is in English). I use this field to order my contacts by area of mutual interest. Is it possible to add this field again in the TB version 102 address book list of fields displayed (so that I can order by it)?
Thank you in advance for your help or suggestions,
Steijn van Essen From i8088 to i7-980X in 25 years and still waiting …
Chosen solution
I am attaching the list of titles that can be used for sorting. This is from Beta.
Read this answer in context 👍 0All Replies (12)
In tools>addressbook, change layout from vertical to horizontal. From that same icon, now click and put checkmark by 'Nickname' so it appears. Now, on heading row, click 'Nickname' to sort. OOPS. Correction. That feature is still in BETA version, but should be appearing in Release version soon.
Modified by david
Thank you David for your swift (and hope giving) response.
Fields selectable to me in version 102.3 seem to be limited to: display name, first name, surname, email address(es), phone number(s), home and/or business address(es), department, organization, source address book. I use dutch interface, so this is my best shot for translation to english. Is this the list 102.3 currently offers? If so, quite a number of fields available to me in 91.10 have gone. Is this conclusion right? And will it be corrected when BETA goes MAINSTREAM?
Steijn van Essen From i8088 to i7-980X in 25 years and still waiting … Another 10 years later: RPi 4 is out. I'm done waiting: Bye bye Wintel and welcome Linux & VMware on ARM
Chosen Solution
I am attaching the list of titles that can be used for sorting. This is from Beta.
I also have the problem with this latest update (102.3.0), just slightly different. I've been using TB for over 15 years but this update has somewhat destroyed my address book systems. I need the primary sort on "Display Name" and include that that field can start with numbers, including leading zeros. I am the president of a Condominium Association/HOA and using the display name field has always, until this upgrade, allowed me to control all of my various email lists. I currently have 16 lists related to my Condo duties. Not only are the lists no longer sorted by Display Name, I also cannot drag records from my address book(s) to add that name to a specific list. Everything was normal with 102.2.1
Dear David,
The screenshot looks promising: it does not include so many extra fields, but I guess the most important of them are there and it adds 'Nickname' and 'Title', the first of which I would really like to have. So I will not bother rearranging my address book and will just manage until the new release is out. Any idea about a time frame?
Thank you so much for now. And being a happy person I will have a look at mr FBeaty's problem after my visit to the dentist. Must say I have used some email lists in Outlook, but not yet in Thunderbird. Would be a nice exercise to try that out.
Steijn
Dear FBeatty (and David),
I just created some mailing lists (one for the board members of a club I'm a member of, and one for the team that builds and supports their website). I did indeed not see a possibility to drag and drop address book entries onto the list, but typing some characters of a person's name will display that name most of the time. So typing helps but drag and drop would certainly be a nice-to-have. That's unfortunately all the support I can give on this point.
With respect to 'Display Name': I'm not sure I fully understand your problem. But I do see that there is no 'display name' field when you create a mailing list. There is another field, though, which is called 'lijstbijnaam' in dutch, so it's probably 'list nickname' in english. Might not be what you're looking for, but I sure hope to see that its contents will be shown in the 'nickname' column once the new release mentioned by David is out. If so, I will be able to sort the mailing list names just as normal address book entries using the 'nickname' column.
David, I will not ask you about this right now; let's just wait for the new release and see what it brings.
Greetings from Steijn
Dear FBeatty,
Maybe this can be of help: Looking back on how I migrated from Outlook to Thunderbird I see I had to map some fields unknown to TB to fields unknown to OL. So the field I used to sort entries in OL was called 'full name' (or so) and I mapped it during import to 'nickname'. If you need a quick solution to your problem you might consider exporting your address book and importing it using a remap so that you can sort on the field(s) you currently can not sort on.
Gr, Steijn
Hello David, Sorry to take so long to reply. Your tip to change layout to horizontal fixed a lot of my issues and the 102.3.1 update took care of the drag and drop issue. Thanks very much. Floyd
Dear David,
Just to let you (and other readers) know: I just received the TB 102.4 update and it added two display and sort fields to my address book: 'nickname' and 'title'. Just as you told me, referring to the at-that-time-BETA release. Problem solved!
Ever so happy now,
Steijn
Thanks for the update. I'm pleased all went well. Would you please mark this solved, so that it gets removed from the open problems list? Thank you.
David, I hope that I chose the right action. Pls correct me if I'm wrong ... Steijn
Yes. THANKS.