162934 - Adding an entry to a Mailing List creates a duplicate entry in the Address Book

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 134590

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Address Book & Contacts, defect)

Description

[Christian Dümmer]

When adding a contact to a mailing list, the actual contact is NOT added to the list, but a copy of it instead. This leaves 2 identical entries in the address book, and 1 entry in the mailing list (pointing to the duplicate entry).

Replicable: Always on certain address books/mailing lists.

Steps:

1. Create a new entry in the Address Book.

2a. Drag it to a Mailing list.
-or-
2b. In the Mailing List's properties window, type the name or address of the new contact.

3. Check the list and the abook for the presence of the entry. The entry appears twice in the abook, and once in the mailing list (pointing to the new, duplicate card in the abook).

I first had this problem on an abook I imported from Communicator 4.79. It was fairly large, with a large Mailing List in it as well (250+ entries).

Since I had had some trouble importing this list (it was impossible on the first mozilla versions on which i tried it), I thought it could be related to a poorly imported abook. So i created a new address book, copied all the entries from the old abook to the new one, created a new mailing list and manually added the cards to it. At first it worked, but now I'm getting dupes again (with cards recently added to the abook, not with the old, imported ones).

<rant>The format in which the abooks are stored is impossible to understand, so I can't check what's wrong with mine.</rant>

Since this is happening with new entries, I'm inclined to attribute the problem to the size of the abook rather than the fact that it contains imported cards. Is there a utility to check the integrity of mozilla's abooks and eventually delete any garbage that could have been left in them?

Comment 1

[Steve Brown]

I find that when I create a 'List' and add contacts to it by typing the e-mail
addresses (and using auto-complete), when I save the list, all address book
entries for the recipients in the new list are duplicated.  If I delete the
list, the duplicate entries vanish.  Actually, I deleted the duplicates first
and then the list, so I had to re-enter all of the addresses!

Comment 2

[Marciano Siniscalchi]

Same problem with Thunderbird 0.2 (20030901) under Windows XP. Dragging
addresses from Personal AB to a mailing list results in duplicate adresses in
the Personal AB.

Comment 3

[Jim]

I believe my problem is related to this one.
To create duplicate entries...
1) Add e-mail address to Address Book.  (ex.  Name "Johny", Email "[e-mail]") 
2) e-mail "Johny" and have "Johny" reply.
3) Suspose "Johny" replys and his profile is setup as
   "Smith, John"  [e-mail]
4) Reply to "Johny"'s reply.
5) A new Address book entry is added with Name "Smith, John", Email "[e-mail]")

I don't want a new entry for "[e-mail]".  I want to keep the one I have and
leave the name as "Johny".

Comment 4

[Christian Dümmer]

Comment from [e-mail] doesn't seem to be related to my original 
report. His problem seems to be the automatic address collection.

I'm not using address collection (turned it off). The problem I reported happens 
when creating a *Mailing List* (not an Address Book) and dragging entries from 
the address book to the mailing list. As you may know, mailing lists are just 
collections of links to the actual entries which are stored in the Address Book 
(i.e., when you modify the entry in the ABook, you are actually changing its 
details on all Mailing Lists where it is found).

Comment 5

[Mitchell Mebane]

Here's a problem I found which appears to be related to this. This has been
tested in both Mozilla Mail 1.5 and Thunderbird 0.3 under Windows XP.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to reproduce:

1) Open the address book
2) Pick a test entry. Any should do. Make sure it is visible on the screen
before doing step 3. This is not necessary, but makes it easier to see the results.
3) Click the New List button
4) Type in a list name, anything works
5) Type in the address you chose in step 2
6) Click OK

A duplicate entry will be created under the original. If you click on the list
name in the left-hand pane, and then go back to the main address book, the entry
will disappear.

Comment 6

[Christian Dümmer]

Well, that would be a step forward. :-) In my case the dupe entry would not 
dissapear by itself. I haven't reproduced what you describe, since I'm not 
running a current build right now. (I must admit that I gave up on this problem, 
and I'm using a special app to handle my mailing list.)

Comment 7

[earthsound]

Is this a dup of bug 134590?

Comment 8

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 134590 ***