420867 - Preference(s) to set default address book(s) for main AB window startup view and/or saving new contacts

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Address Book, enhancement)

Description

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

my main address book, and probably that of many others, is not "Personal Address book".  And so it would be helpful to have the ability to set default address book name so that:

1. when in any mail window you create a new contact, the new contact will probably already be set to the correct AB.
2. when opening the address book, it is not necessary to click on AB before using  quick search  
3. when opening the address book, it is not necessary to click on AB before using keyboard to navigate to an AB contact

Additional scenario for people, like me, who populate ALL their ABs in multiple locations (like home and work).  Say I have 10 ABs, including one family and one business - at home I'd like the default AB to be family, at work I'd like the default AB to be business.

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Worth considering as an enhancement.

Comment 3

[Doug Kerr]

In fact, since some recent update (I am now at 38.4), in my TB the default address book is "All Address Books". I would prefer to have the default address book be Personal Address Book (as I think it was formerly).

Maybe I can set this, but I don't see how.

Best regards,

Doug Kerr

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, NI for questions) from comment #0)
> my main address book, and probably that of many others, is not "Personal
> Address book".  And so it would be helpful to have the ability to set
> default address book name so that:

Yeah, good ideas never die. Users in 2016 still advocate for the main AB startup view part of this RFE (triggered by the new default of newly introduced "All Address Books" node):
Bug 1177706.

I think Wayne's original comment 0 covers two different aspects which should be implemented separately.

> 1. when in any mail window you create a new contact, the new contact will
> probably already be set to the correct AB.

So this is about saving new contacts, mostly from outside the main mail window (or maybe from "All ABs" view or read-only ABs inside). Inside the AB, new contacts are generally created in the currently selected AB.
I think we need to specify the scenarios more precisely to figure out how this could work.
For starters, certainly having a global option for one default AB for creating new contacts from the main mail UI (Add to AB, yellow star) would be cool.
In the long run, I imagine this should probably a per-account/identity setting, so that when you save addresses from your business account, they end up in the business AB, etc.

> 2. when opening the address book, it is not necessary to click on AB before
> using  quick search  
> 3. when opening the address book, it is not necessary to click on AB before
> using keyboard to navigate to an AB contact

2) and 3) are essentially the same, to set a default AB for startup view of main AB. So whereas 1) is primarily about saving from outside main AB window, this is about viewing the main AB window. I think this should not be conflated with 1, because ABs for saving are identity-dependant, whereas the main AB is generally cross-identity, and you can only ever view one AB at a time (whereas you might have different per-identity preferred ABs for saving).

> Additional scenario for people, like me, who populate ALL their ABs in
> multiple locations (like home and work).  Say I have 10 ABs, including one
> family and one business - at home I'd like the default AB to be family, at
> work I'd like the default AB to be business.

That's correctly elaborating on the usefulness of the main AB initial view part.