Open Bug 1331249 Opened 7 years ago Updated 7 months ago

Addressbook duplicates, finding and merging

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, enhancement)

45 Branch
enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: andrixnet, Unassigned)

References

(Depends on 1 open bug)

Details

Addressbook UI in TB is quite minimal and totally lacks any duplicate contacts management functions. 

This is a feature request for the following: 

- ability to merge 2 (or more) contacts into one by selecting 2 or more contacts in the contacts list pane and either using context menu option or via tools menu. Also provide keyboard shortcut.
Fields that differ between merged contacts should be concatenated using comma separator.

- tool to find potential duplicates (inside an addressbook or across all defined addressbooks)
 * find duplicates according to same email, same name, same mobile, same phone (these and potentially other criteria, displayed in a dialog and allowing checkbox selection)
 * display duplicate candidates in a list, prepending each with a checkbox, grouping each set of candidates and identifying these groups by alternateting background.
 * command to automatically merge contacts in each group
 * command to automatically merge checked contacts in each group
 * command to manually merge checked contacts in each group, by presenting the contact properties dialog for each merger result to the user to inspect and edit.
FWIW, I think some addons provide some of these functions.
And, it is always preferable to *prevent* a problem, via bug 45946 in this case, than fix contacts after the fact.
See Also: → 45946
Note that the TB address book is likely to be replaced completely at some stage, so we're investing minimum effort into it.
@Wayne: depending on which criteria prevents duplicates ( as per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45946 ). Either these criteria are too strict, which hampers usability, or too relaxed (ie let's say only duplicate email, highest focus in this kind of application), then user still has to consider other potential fields as duplicates and resolve them. 

@Jorg: If that is the case, then I hope these reported issues will be taken into consideration in the new rewritten TB addressbook

Thank you.
You could try this add-on:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/cardbook/

You need to understand the situation that TB is in. In 2012 Mozilla withdrew paid staff from the Thunderbird project and left it to unpaid volunteers to maintain. Since 2016 TB is collecting donations and is in the process of hiring people to guarantee its survival. Fixing the address book is NOT one of the tasks these people will have.

That said, apart from the add-on I pointed out, there is a lot of interest to modernise the TB address book, see some of the threads on the tb-planning mailing list:
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2016-November/date.html
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2016-November/005032.html

https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2016-December/date.html
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2016-December/005044.html
As it appears to the regular user as being under the umbrella of Mozilla, I was not aware of this.
Thus it is understandable why progress has been slow since 2012. 
Sadly, addressbook seems to have had similarly low priority before 2012 as well. 

I've contributed to the project before, to the extent of my abilities, by reporting other issues and testing. Coding however is beyond me.

But I will look it up and add my donation.

Thank you for the suggested addon. I'll give it a try, but I still hold that an email app of TB's magnitude must have a good addressbook manager. 

Thank you.
We can agree a new address book should be a priority. But it is a huge undertaking, and to be fair, it also didn't quite get manpower prior to 2012 when there was paid staff.  But as noted there is progress.
Depends on: 45946
See Also: 45946

This problem is addressed also by the TB extension Duplicate Contacts Manager.

Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
See Also: → 126022
Severity: normal → S3

With Thunderbird 102 a new "Address Book" component was released (https://blog.thunderbird.net/2022/06/thunderbird-102-released-a-serious-upgrade-to-your-communication/)
The feature request regarding the topics in this bug still seem mainly valid.

Is there a place (an overview bug or a roadmap) where the planning for enhancements regarding the features of the address book takes place?

See Also: → merge-contacts
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