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Can I add sender to my address book without opening the email?

  • 12 replies
  • 4 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Chekhov

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Due to a mistake on my part, I have to rebuild my address book from zero. I can add contacts from an opened email, but it would be quicker if I could add a contact to my address book from the 'correspondents' or 'recipients' column in the email list pane. I cannot see a way to do this. Were it possible, an option in the context menu to do so would be a great help. Is there a way to add correspondent contacts to my address book without opening an email for each person I need to add?

Due to a mistake on my part, I have to rebuild my address book from zero. I can add contacts from an opened email, but it would be quicker if I could add a contact to my address book from the 'correspondents' or 'recipients' column in the email list pane. I cannot see a way to do this. Were it possible, an option in the context menu to do so would be a great help. Is there a way to add correspondent contacts to my address book without opening an email for each person I need to add?

Chosen solution

What version of the add-on do you have? Version 3 from the AMO webpage is obsolete. Download version 5.1.2 from the author's site.

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All Replies (12)

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Try the EmailAddressCrawler add-on.

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Thank you for the suggestion, but I could not install email address crawler as it is not compatible with my version of TB, which is that latest I could find, 52 something.

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I wouldn't pay too much attention to the compatibility statements. Some time ago we stopped the automatic disabling of addons with each version update. Just try adding it. I have used this addon on a recent Thunderbird.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/installing-addon-thunderbird

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Thunderbird 52.2.1 blocks the download.

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I have the crawler add-on installed and working in all versions of TB, but that may be because I also have this add-on installed to avoid 'incompatibility' conflicts:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/checkcompatibility/

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Thank you very much sfhowes I have made some progress. I now have compatibility checking disabled, and I have email address crawler installed, and when I right-click on an email folder there is an option to crawl for email addresses. So far so good. I started small to crawl my drafts folder (not many emails), and my address book popped up so I created a test folder 'crawled from drafts' but could not get anything further to happen. and I cannot find any kind of interface with the crawler except that crawl option in the context menu of an email folder. I am new to Thunderbird so might be missing something obvious.

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It might want to you to select some messages to crawl over. Ctrl+a will select all messages in the folder.

I can't think of any reason why it might have trouble with the Drafts folder, but then again I can't recall trying to use the EAC addon on Drafts. Some tools refuse to work on so-called "special folders" but I don't think this includes Drafts. Have you tried it on any regular folders such as Inbox?

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Thank you Zenos. I have now tried on an inbox sub-folder, then I tried on inbox, and I tried with files selected and unselected. All that happens is the address box pops up and there seems to be nothing clickable that looks like it might communicate with EAC.

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Here's what I do:

  1. Open the folder;
  2. Select the messages;
  3. Right-click, select "Crawl selected emails for email addresses";
  4. Select which parts of the messages to search;
  5. Choose a destination;
  6. Curse because it doesn't let you create an address book on the fly;
  7. Close it all, add the new address book;
  8. Start again.

Nowhere do I see anything that sounds like "the address box pops up".

Note that just about everything in Thunderbird can be done via a right-click.

Modified by Zenos

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Thank you Zenos. I tried your method. What happens after I open the folder and select the messages is that I don't get a 'crawl selected messages' option on right click. No option mentions crawiling.

I can right click a folder, and get 'crawl folder for email addresses' and that's when the address book pops up without any further crawl options.

Thank you for your help.

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Chosen Solution

What version of the add-on do you have? Version 3 from the AMO webpage is obsolete. Download version 5.1.2 from the author's site.

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Thank you very much sfhowes and zenos. Email Address Crawler is working fine now. I did not know there was a later version to download. Excellent effort on your part thank you for sticking with it. Best wishes to you both.