Edit Details and Done buttons in the Edit Contact dialog box don't do anything
Hello --
I'm using Thunderbird, most recently auto-updated to 60.7.0 (32-bit, don't know why that was the version the installer installed on my new (and certainly 64-bit) Win10 machine when I set it up a year ago), and this morning I happened to notice in the list of old messages in my inbox's message list that the sender's name in the Correspondents column for a particular message was wrong. I highlighted that message in the inbox listing, and, indeed, when the message displayed in the message pane, the "From" field showed the wrong sender's name. When I moused over the sender's name in the From field, the pop-up showed the right sender's e-mail address; it was just the sender's name that was wrong. So I right-clicked on the sender's name and then selected Edit Contact. The Edit Contact dialog box came up. I changed the sender's name to the right name and clicked Done. Nothing happened. I clicked Done a few more times. Nothing happened. I tried clicking the Edit Details button. Nothing happened. I clicked the Edit Details button a few more times. Nothing happened. Finally, I clicked the Cancel button and the Edit Contact dialog box went away. The sender's name in the From field of the message was still showing the wrong name. I clicked on a different message in the inbox list, the message pane refreshed, and then I clicked back to the message of concern, and this time when it filled in the message pane, the sender's name in the From field was the correct name I had entered in the Edit Contact dialog box -- except that the wrong sender's name was still showing in the Correspondents field for that message in the inbox message list. I tried exiting Thunderbird and restarting, and went through all of this again, and saw exactly the same behavior. The bottom line is that neither the Edit Details nor the Done buttons in the Edit Contact dialog box work correctly, at least not when that dialog box is accessed by right-clicking on the From field in the message pane.
In case it matters, I'm using the ExQuilla for Microsoft Exchange plug-in to be able to access my inbox on my office's Microsoft Exchange server.
-- Larry Afrin, M.D.
Wšě wotmołwy (3)
There are cases where a corrupted address book doesn't accept or retain edits, and for that there is a remedy. But there was also a bug that applied especially to non-English versions of TB, that was fixed in the beta version 67.
To find out which case your problem indicates, create a new address book in Address Book and add a test contact, then see if you can edit the details, and if the edits remain after a TB restart.
Thanks for your suggestions, sfhowes. I was able to get into Address Book and create a new address book and create a contact and edit a contact fine -- and that led me to pull up, in Address Book, the contact with the right e-mail address but the wrong display name that was being listed in the Correspondents field in the inbox message list. I corrected the display name (and the first and last names, which were consistent with the display name and were wrong), but upon then restarting TB, although the message is now displayed in the message pane with the right name in the From field, the Correspondents field in the inbox message list is still showing the wrong name. I again right-clicked on the From field in the message pane and selected the Edit Contact dialog box (which brings up a different, more compact dialog box than when I select Edit Contact within the Address Book), but I again found that the Edit Details button and the Done button did nothing, and only the Cancel button did anything (simply closing the dialog box).
I also tried pulling up a different message from my inbox, where the information in the From field in the message pane and the information in the Correspondents field in the inbox message list are all correct. I tried right-clicking on the From field and pulling up the Edit Contact box on that correct entry to see if the Edit Details or Done buttons would work on a contact entry that's correct -- but those buttons still did nothing, and I still found that the Cancel button was the only way to close the dialog box.
I have a large contact list and I'm reluctant to export and re-import it unless necessary (i.e., I'd prefer to not risk creating even more problems; I've had my share, over the years, of export/import problems), especially since the Correspondents field appears to be correct for every other message in my (large) inbox, and as such I've had no use for the Edit Contact dialog box except in the case of this one particular message which somehow came to be associated with the wrong Correspondent. Can you tell whether the above-described behavior suggests more a corrupted address book or a bug?
-- LBA
If editing a contact in the new address book works correctly, it suggests you aren't experiencing the bug, which affects even uncorrupted address books. So, I suggest you follow the steps to repair the corrupted address book. If you rename instead of delete abook.mab as per the instructions, you can always revert to the original state if the repair doesn't work.