136897 - Composition: Need ability to manipulate multiple recipients simultaneously (multiple selection of email addresses, e-mail contacts, delete, copy, toggle To/CC/Bcc etc.)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[Matt Coarr]

So far as I can tell there is no way to change the type of (or delete) multiple
recipients at the same time.  Basically this means there is no multiple
selection mechanism in the mail recipient box.  

(Not a major issue, but it would make life easier.  Netscape Communicator had
this functionality.)

Comment 1

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

-->varada

Comment 2

[Jason M. Abels]

Well. You're right. There isn't.

Comment 3

[Mozquito]

I think this is a feature every serious mail-client must have. It often happens
to me that I do a Reply-all and want to throw away a few recipients.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 283492 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 270100 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Adam Guthrie]

*** Bug 304132 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

xref bug 143147, which is specifically about the ease-of-deletion case.

Comment 8

[Steven de Jong]

I support this!

May I add that it appears that on many webpages, a functionality is described for TB that is not there: entering multiple recipients by separating them with ';' or ','. Listed on tens of pages, and simply is not possible. 

In my opinion, the current way of adding recipients (or CC or BCC etc) is ridiculously cumbersome. Why not just have a text field for To:, a text field for CC:, and a text field for BCC:? Or at least provide us with the option to have such an UI instead of this oddly designed one.

Comment 9

[Jason Daly]

I support this item 100% too!

In my opinion this is *the only* feature lacking in Thunderbird.  Combining Thunderbird with Inverse.ca's SOGo and you have an Exchange killer -- but users are unfortunately very likely to be annoyed by the way the TO, CC and BCC fields are handled in Thunderbird.

I have been following threads on this topic for a while now (prior to 2006) and even pledged $250 on Micropledge (before it shutdown operations) to have this issue addressed.

Comment 10

[Jesse Wiens]

This really needs to be addressed, in my opinion.  In my work, I'm often needing to resend an email (edit as new) to different groups of people.  Because I work with many groupings, and new groups get created regularly, this is the most efficient way I can respond.  The fact that I have to delete recipients one-by-one is, as the other commented said, "ridiculously cumbersome", and almost frustrating enough to make me want to go back to MS Entourage.  (almost!)

Comment 11

[kaecyyalpha+mozilla]

Right on!! This bug makes Thunderbird extremely frustrating when trying to put together mails to
multiple addresses quickly.

You can’t copy and paste email addresses from To, From fields, etc, drag and drop them into other emails, and so on-- way too clunky and difficult to manage!

Comment 12

[aran]

Indeed. This feature is sorely needed! How can it be that we can select several addresses with ctrl+click in the addressbook to move over to the To: or CC: fields, but once they are there, then we cannot select multiple ones?? It's ridiculous! Please fix this.

Comment 13

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

This doesn't block 167010. This bug is about composition, and the other one is about reading.

Comment 14

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Jim Porter (:squib) from comment #13)
> This doesn't block 167010. This bug is about composition, and the other one
> is about reading.

Although I hope ultimately we'll be able to do bug 167010 (select text of email addresses in header to copy them) for both reading and composition.

Comment 16

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

this is also found on GS, but no systematical search done yet

Comment 17

[abekonge]

There are actually two extensions that provide this functionality in different ways:

AddressContext
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/addresscontext/

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

Unfortunately, they are both so outdated that AddressContext only works for versions up to TB2 (although a user comments that (s)he was able to get it to function for TB5 with a workaround), and RecipientBox has been "disabled by an administrator" while only working for up to TB3.

In order to be able to use at least one of these great and very useful extensions, I am still using TB3.

Will someone please incorporate this functionality into Thunderbird?

Comment 18

[duparchy]

This is very frustrating that simple cut/paste in the mail recipient box isn't possible. 

Working with TB mailing lists is a pain.

recipentbox was a great add-on. Still no such thing into TB core or other similar add-on ?

Comment 20

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Ladies and gentlemen - 18 years later, this has finally been fixed (release to follow):

• In bug 440377, Alex (aleca), our new UX lead, radically re-designed the entire recipients area, revolutionizing the entire handling of recipients, including some basic (multi)selection and (multi)deletion patterns and massive overall UX improvements, especially wrt ux-efficiency.
• In bug 1609647, Alex (aleca) implemented "Move to To|CC|BCC" on the pill context menu, which works for single and multiple selected pills.
• In bug 1602431, Thomas D. fixed and improved a number of issues wrt deleting (multiple) selected recipients, focus issues etc.
• In bug 1615917, Thomas D. implemented a simple way of selecting all recipients of a message via incremental Ctrl+A.
• In bug 1602397 by Thomas D., we'll further rectify and improve selection methods.
• In Bug 1603051, Thomas D. suggests introducing inter-pill insertion points for even more flexibility of selecting, inserting, and reordering recipients, both via mouse and keyboard.
• More improvements pending, see dependants of bug 440377 (recipient pills), bug 1601748 (pills-UI), bug 1601745 (pills-UX).

Comment 21

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

With 5 duplicates in product Thunderbird, many TB comments, and marked "Fixed by TB bug 440377", this has de facto turned into a Thunderbird bug.

@Frank-Rainer (:frg):
You may want to keep tracking this in a dedicated SeaMonkey bug.

Comment 22

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

Thanks for the update. Filed Bug 1645674.