284148 - Implement context menu to copy csv list of multiple selected address book entries in format {Name1 <email1>, Name2 <email2>, ...} for pasting elsewhere

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, enhancement)

Description

[John Bow]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.5.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.12
Build Identifier: Version 1.0 Build 20041206

I have many users that want to copy multiple addresses directly out of their address book, and into a 
mail message.  (without having to export).  Can this feature be developed?


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. open address book
2. try to highlight and copy multiple addresses out of the addressbook, and paste them into a mail 
message
3.
Actual Results:  
cannot copy multiple addresses

Expected Results:  
it should have copied all of the names in one entry, so you can paste them to a new message

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en)
AppleWebKit/125.5.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.12

Is your problem with Safari or Thunderbird?  This is TB, not Safari.

Comment 2

[John Bow]

I really dont know what you mean by "safari".  I am talking about thunderbird
running on windows xp.  safari is a web browser on os x, and thunderbird is an
email client, which is cross platform.  ...?

-john

(In reply to comment #1)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en)
> AppleWebKit/125.5.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.12
> 
> Is your problem with Safari or Thunderbird?  This is TB, not Safari.
> 

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

you can't drag an address (an address book entry) to drop it on an email compose
window?  Or select multiple with ctrl-click, ctrl-click, ... and drag (or Mac
equivalent)?

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

RFE in titles is obsolete, the "enhancement" severity is good enough.

Comment 5

[John Bow]

ok, so I will make myself more clear:

I have a user that wants to be able to open the address book (AB), copy multiple
names from a multiple address entry, and paste these addresses into the body of
an email address.

I thought I had marked this a 'feature request'. if not, my mistake

-john

(In reply to comment #3)
> you can't drag an address (an address book entry) to drop it on an email compose
> window?  Or select multiple with ctrl-click, ctrl-click, ... and drag (or Mac
> equivalent)?

Comment 6

[Lewis Rosenthal]

I'd be happy if I could simply look up one address, right click it (without opening the properties of the card), and select Copy. Unfortunately, when I need to forward someone's address to a third party, I must open the card, select the address, copy it, close the card, and then paste the address into the body of the message.

If anyone thinks my description deserves a new bug, or if one has already been opened of which someone here is aware, please advise. Otherwise, I'll be happy to vote for this one, and continue to provide feedback as I can.

Lewis

Comment 7

[Robert Rothenberg]

(In reply to comment #6)
> If anyone thinks my description deserves a new bug, or if one has already been
> opened of which someone here is aware, please advise. Otherwise, I'll be happy
> to vote for this one, and continue to provide feedback as I can.

Sounds like the correct description. Feel free to vote for this bug.

Comment 8

[Lewis Rosenthal]

(In reply to comment #7)
> (In reply to comment #6)
> > If anyone thinks my description deserves a new bug, or if one has already been
> > opened of which someone here is aware, please advise. Otherwise, I'll be happy
> > to vote for this one, and continue to provide feedback as I can.
> 
> Sounds like the correct description. Feel free to vote for this bug.
> 
Thanks for the assurance! ;-) Now, if someone would be kind enough to move this from Thunderbird to Core (as I am looking for this on SeaMonkey, and thus, this is a cross-app RFE), I would be eternally grateful.

Lewis

Comment 9

[Lewis Rosenthal]

Oh, and also ALL OSes. I'm on OS/2.

Lewis

Comment 10

[JT Moree]

Wait a minute.  You can actually highlight text in an address book entry?  I haven't been able to do that in moz/thunderbird in years.  I don't think I've ever been able to do that since Netscape 4.x.  

How does one enable this 'feature'?  I have to manually retype addresses bc I can't copy and paste them.  Is there something I'm missing?  Let's see.  Right click on name in top pane . . . no.  Right click on address in bottom pane . . . no.  I know!  Lets' DRAG'N'DROP the address card to the body of a new email . . . no (not to mention that wouldn't help with copying to a different app).  

So yes, I'll vote for this bug bc if I could copy and paste two addresses I could also copy and paste one.  

Comment 11

[Craig Markwardt]

At least part of this problem is easy to fix.  The problem is that the address book entries are rendered with the CardViewText/CardViewLink CSS class, which prevents them from being selected.   The following TB extension should solve the problem by making the text selectable, and thus copy/paste-able.  Email addresses can by copied by the same mechanism.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/7065

I will also attach a patch which improves the situation in trunk.

Comment 12

[Craig Markwardt]

Attachment: Makes CardViewText/CardViewLink entries selectable so they can be copy/pasted

The problem is that Address Book entries are rendered with the CardViewText / CardViewLink CSS class, which means one cannot select copy or paste any of the entries.

This patch (against CVS trunk) fixes the problem by adding the "-moz-user-select: text" style to these entries.

I tested this patch on TB 2.0.0.12 for the Mac OS X (PPC) and Linux32 platforms.

Comment 13

[P. Morton]

This continues to be a failing of Thunderbird, and as someone above points out is is a regression. 

As far as I'm concerned, all I want to be able to do (again) is, when I have a contact card open, and it is showing me an address in the form:

20 Noisyhawk Boulevard
Maddison
Newhaven, 06443
Connecticut

That I can cut and paste it directly into an OpenOffice letter.

That's surely a pretty basic piece of functionality for an address book.
I haven't tried the patch suggested above, but is there any prospect someone can put a patch forward that will be incorporated in the next upgrade?

Comment 14

[Craig Markwardt]

You can use the extension mentioned above,
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/7065
to do what you want.

Comment 15

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

While addressbook obviously has its shortcomings, it's not very clear what this bug is about, because many scenarios actually work with drag and drop.

It's true TB doesn't offer an explicit "Copy" command on the context menu of address cards in the contacts list pane. However, if we are talking about just copying lists of multiple contacts in the format of "Name1 <Email1>, Name2 <Email2>, ...", you can achieve the same a bit less comfortably using drag and drop:

Open AB
Select multiple cards from contacts list pane (even non-adjacent cards)

For writing a message to selected contacts:
- click "Write" button in AB, or
- right-click on selected contacts, then "Write"
- drag selected contacts and drop in recipients area of a TB composition window

For "pasting" the list of contacts (csv list of "Name <PrimaryEmailAddress>") into the *body* of a composition, or into a word processor of your choice (if it accepts drag and drop, which is not the case for some simple apps like Windows Notepad):
- drag seleced contacts and drop in msg body of TB composition window, or into an open document of your word processor

So practically, I think that's an acceptable solution for most scenarios mentioned here. John (reporter), can you comment if drag and drop solves your scenario, or why not?

Notwithstanding, having a "Copy 'Name <email>'" entry on the context menu of selected cards in AB would be nice. Perhaps that was the original intention of this bug.

Note that the trouble starts with correctly labeling that option already, unless we make it a fly-out with various options, because some like reporter here want "Name <Email>" list only, whereas other might want to copy the *full* details of a contact including physical addresses, phone numbers, work place etc.

P. Morton (comment 13) and Craig (comment 12, comment 14) and others, your issue of copying content of a *single* card seen in preview is bug 96968, and yes, it's a very old and annoying shortcoming in basic functionality. Also, Craig's patch attachment 316757 [details] [diff] [review] is indeed the starting point to solve that bug: Craig, thank you for that. If you rename the addon.xpi of comment 14 to addon.zip, you can inspect the contents. While your patch enables basic copying, it takes a lot more to get the format of copy content correct when users select cross-sections of a fully filled AB card preview, or to let them copy certain blocks like physical address in one go. But yes, it's definitely possible as seen in the addon.

Comment 16

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

I've morphed this bug into what this is probably about; pls correct me if I'm wrong.