270927 - Ability to choose default identity to use for address book entries (contact/mailing list)

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Address Book, enhancement)

Description

[Ralf Hauser]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a5) Gecko/20041113
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a5) Gecko/20041113

More and more people manage multiple smtp services, i.e. multiple identities out
of one mail program on one computer.
When having people in my address book, I typically send mail to them in a context.
E.g. for work contacts, they should receive mail from my business identity
(irrespective of whether I send to them from my office LAN or dial-up/cable line
at home) and not from my volunteer org/soccer team address. So, this RFE asks
for being able to specifiy for each address which sending identity this should
be defaulted to.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.




Another application is the following: Under the assumption that it will take
some more time until global PKI really flies (if ever), in the meantime, secure
mail services may fill the gap (e.g. privasphere.com). Thus if an attorney
agrees with a client to send mail only via such a secure smtp, it would be of
great help it the mail program assists in always really choosing that secure smtp.
Similarly for the case that the recipient certificate is known, it should be
possible to specify on a per address book entry to default to encrypted/signed
delivery! (the latter under the assumption that the mail program doesn't have
the global default anyway to always use encryption if available - since quite
some people also read mail via web-mail/internet cafees where they don't have
their decryption keys with them, such a global default doesn't appear to be
practical on the short run)

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
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Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.

Comment 3

[Alexander Kluss]

Today we got a question from a CrossPoint user in de.comm.software.mozilla.mailnews if it's possible to set a specific identity in a adressbook entry for compose a new mail.
This Bug would be solve the problem and would be a nice feature.

A additional problem in this RFE is the case that a compose window would been open over compose an the user add the adress/name of a abook entry with a different identity as those the compose window was opened.

It's also a problem what identity would be used if two or more Addressee with different Identitiies added to a new mail.

I found "[RFE] allow to specify a identity for compose a new mail to a contact/mailinglist" is a better summary.

Comment 4

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Confirming and setting a better summary, as suggested by Alexander Kluss.  The prefered way of indicating an RFE is by setting the severity to "Enhancement", which has already been done here.

Comment 5

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

*** Bug 363178 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Compare bug 36482, which would allow to do this via rules.

Comment 15

[Rob Janssen]

I still miss the feature that was suggested 16 years ago by Ralf.
I have a single mail account with several different identities attached to it. Incoming mail all arrives in a single INBOX but it is partly forwarded from other domains, plus there are several addresses I use within my own domain.
When I "reply" to mail, the system usually selects the correct identity and thus the correct From address and fullname.
But when I write "new" mail and use the Address Book to find the mail address, there is no way to select the identity automatically, and often mail goes out under the default identity by mistake.
I think every address book card should have a dropdown, by default blank, that selects a preferred identity when mailing to that address.
(just like there is a selection for "prefers to receive messages formatted as text/html")

Of course, requests like this do not automatically get resolved when nobody comments on them for some time. So no need to try that.

Comment 16

[Nicolas Mandil (:NicolasWeb)]

I need that too because I use email aliases depending on whom I wrote.
I've set up the preference 'Reply from this identity when delivery headers match' but it doesn't match all my needs