322347 - To, cc Message Filter Rules should have name/address selection using an address picker

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Filters, enhancement)

Description

[RenegadeX]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

(I hope this is not a Duplicate - I searched high and low for this Feature Request, and was surprised not to find it. I put this under Thunderbird, Component: Address Book, but really it is about Filters..)

There is currently (as of TB1.5RC2 which I'm using), no way to, from the Tools->Message Filters message rules dialog - choose existing contacts (names, email addresses, or existing mailing lists) from an Address Book to go with a 'From', 'To', 'CC', or 'To or CC'.

Outlook Express (as an example, but I'm sure other apps are similar), allows a user to create a filter for one of the above the above mentioned Rules, during which a 'rule sentence' appears below saying (ex)"where the From line ~contains people~", with the 'contains people' being clickable. When clicked, it opens up a 'Select People' dialog which allows the user to either type the names in manually, or click on the 'Address Book' button in the dialog and choose 1 *or more* names from any 1 *or more* of my address books or contacts lists. I can even choose a Group (aka 'mailing list'), and add it along with email addresses, if I should wish to do so. Once you are done adding names to the 'filter list', you click OK and return to the Filter Rules dialog.

Yet Thunderbird gives me no such option - names have to be typed manually, or cut-and-pasted. It's not even possible to drag-and-drop names from the Address Book (which would be neat, as unlike in OE, both are accessible at the same time). And as it's not possible to create a filter rule directly from inside the Address Book, which would be really neat (suggested 5 years ago in Bug 65135 - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=65135 ) - as a long-time Outlook Express (& Outlook) user, Thunderbird's lack of innovation and 'old-school' functionality - disappoints.

Reproducible: Always




Somewhat similar Bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=187768 - points out that the 'To' and 'CC' Filter Rules do not allow searches in the Address Book. I thought that the Bug report I'm  typing now might be a duplicate, but 187768 is actually about the 2nd-dropdown in the Filter dialog not showing the same choices that the 'From' rule provides. If implemented, what I proposed above would take care of this 187768 Bug.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

You can do filters like: From is/isn't in my address book. But you can't do To, CC. Changing summary and moving to core filter component.

Comment 2

[RenegadeX]

(In reply to comment #1)
> You can do filters like: From is/isn't in my address book. But you can't do To,
> CC. Changing summary and moving to core filter component.

[e-mail] changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|UNCONFIRMED                 |NEW
          Component|Address Book                |MailNews: Filters
     Ever Confirmed|0                           |1
            Product|Thunderbird                 |Core
            Summary|From, to, cc Message Filter |To, cc Message Filter Rules
                   |Rules should allow user to  |should allow user to pick
                   |pick name/address from      |name/address from Address
                   |Address Book                |Book
            Version|unspecified                 |Trunk


I see you changed the name of this Bug..
Perhaps you did not grasp the scope of my complaint or I did not explain clearly enough -- I'm not talking about "is/isn't" in my address book (in actual fact, I pointed out that Bug 187768 deals with that very issue) - this Bug report is requesting the Message Filter Rules dialog to give me direct access to the Address Book so that I can select names/addresses to use with the filter. See Outlook Express for an excellent example of this implementation..

This function would apply to the (1st dropdown) 'From', 'To', 'CC', 'To or CC' filters, hence my original title "From, to, cc Message Filter Rules should allow user to pick name/address from Address Book".

Upon further inspection, this functionality, if added, should also be implemented on the 'Perform this action:' section for the following:
'Forward message to'

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

ah, sorry, no, I didn't get that. So you want an address picker for the message filter UI.

Comment 4

[RenegadeX]

(In reply to comment #3)
> ah, sorry, no, I didn't get that. So you want an address picker for the message
> filter UI.

Exactly. Manually typing / having to open up the address book and do a cut-&-paste is so 1995..