75711 - Ability to organize/group/search addresses with custom Tags/Categories/Keywords (vs. current broken mailing list design)

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Address Book, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Henrik Gemal]

Sometimes it could be nice if it was possible to group people into groups 
instead of just having all the people listed. I dont mean maling lists.

I'll try to illustrate:
Currently the addressbook looks like this:
People:
Henrik Gemal
Thomas Gemal
Peter Thomson
Eric Svensen
Work
  - Thomas Gemal
  - Peter Thomson
  - Eric Svensen


I would like to have two groups:
Family
  - Henrik Gemal
  - Thomas Gemal
Soccers Friends
  - Eric Svensen
Peter Thomson

Then I could also make a mailing list called "Work" which had "Thomas Gemal", 
"Eric Svensen" and "Peter Thomson" in it.

Comment 1

[laurel]

This sounds familiar to me as a request logged awhile ago... possible duplicate.

Comment 2

[Henrik Gemal]

I cant find the dupe. So this must be the *one*

Comment 3

[Henrik Gemal]

RFE cleanup. RFE is already indicated by the Severity field...Sorry for the 
spam!

Comment 4

[Henrik Gemal]

*** Bug 100833 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Kai Lahmann (is there, where MNG is)]

*** Bug 161178 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

taking all of chuang's bugs.  she doesn't work on mozilla anymore.

Comment 7

[moshe weitzman]

i notice that Calendar has already implemented 'Categories'. That is what this
bug is about. IMO, Mozilla should have a global Catagory list and then each app
will use it as needed (bookmarks, address book, calendar, etc.)

Comment 8

[Bryce Mozilla Nesbitt]

If we could just sort on, say, the company field, this would fall out for free.

Comment 9

[C. Conrad Cady]

This is important for people who are trying to convert from Outlook Express.  OE
allows groups within groups, and those groups are not limited to contacts with
e-mail addresses.

Comment 10

[Jon Roland]

This might be the place to mention my request for enhancement, that a function
be provided that would extract the addresses from a selected message, either the
sender, the recipients, or both, and deposit them into a specified address
sublist, which could be selected or created for the occasion, to keep them
together and identify the message from which they were extracted, so the user
could return to add values to the other fields of the cards for each, and
perhaps even as a batch insert to all the cards in the extract.

Comment 11

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

*** Bug 337479 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[Phil Hannent]

Just a visual suggestion, surely now that Email messages can be tagged the same should apply to contacts.

Keeping the convention would be helpful.

Comment 13

[Phil Hannent]

Sorry to post again but I just had a thought.

If you:
1, Rename "New lists" to "New tag",
2, Get rid of the List "nick name" and "description" fields,
3, On a contact add the ability to set a tag (add the contact to a list)

You practically have it.  A contact could be in more than 1 List (tag/group), it would keep a central place for the contact information while grouping them.

The crucial bit of this really is the ability from the contact list add a tag, rather than having to type you could drag and drop or right click to add them.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

bug 383844 is a duplicate?

Bug 100833 and Bug 161178 are, I think, not duplicates of this. (but probably no good reason to change them after all this time)

Comment 16

[Rolf Gloor]

re Phil Hannent:
No. I think that replacing the list by the tag is not a good idea, since the list is a great tool to send eMails to a big selection of people with selecting on list.
=> Please keep the list!

The whole should be achieved by creating either categories like in MS Outlook
(with multiple categories selectable) or by adding tags.

So one could put a contact/address in more than one category / add more than one tag.
So one could group by tags / categories (and therefore like in Outlook, one address could appear multiple times - when more than 1 tag / category is added/selected).

=>Please add either categories or tags.
=>Please allow multiple tag or category selection per one contact.

Comment 18

[Andy Pepperdine]

A similar problem arises if I want to create a list of mailing addresses for Christmas cards. Not everyone on the list has an e-mail address. At the moment I'm creating dummies like ann@nowhere just to get them into a list.

Possible solutions:
  1. Add tags (or categories) to a contact and be able to filter on the tag
  2. Be able to put contacts with no e-mail address into a list (see also bug 58485)

Comment 23

[Rolf Gloor]

This is probably the one feature, that holds me off the most for changing to thunderbird as my live PIM. (Having TB installed for test purpose since several years. Daily to weekly updating to the latest nightly builds.)

THE MUST: multiple tags (/keywords/categories / whatever you want to name them) per contact

NICE TO HAVE: The ability to sort by tags not only within an address book but across multiple address books (wherever those tags are available).

-> So one could link to a LDAP AB, to the Personal AB (PAB) as well as to an online AB (like Google Contacts)  and sort by available tags.
for example by:
- suppliers, 
- clients, 
- business1 AND suppliers (=supplier of business2), 
- business1 AND clients (=clients of business1), or friends

Comment 24

[Rolf Gloor]

re-thinking this:

(In reply to comment #23)
> NICE TO HAVE: The ability to sort by tags not only within an address book but
> across multiple address books (wherever those tags are available).
> 

I would consider it MORE than nice-to-have.

It would be an IMPORTANT feature to deal with addresses / contacts.

Comment 25

[Kristo]

Same thoughts here....

Sorting the contacts by tags and the ability to have a the contacts 
organized and saved in a simple treeview is one of the most important
feature for anyone with lots of contacts.

None of the guys in this office has less than 500 contacts. Having
them all in one list is still a pain in the ass. (Yes we're using
TB3 in a productive environement. Not every build though :-)

Comment 26

[bege10]

I don't want to believe it. I was waiting for TB3 hoping this feature will be included. It is not! I know it's a lot of voluntary work, but I can't do it.

Comment 27

[danlieberman]

As an avid outlook user I can say that this plugin would be clutch to getting me to finally take the plung to TB.  I love everything about the mozilla products but it is essential to be able to categorize the contacts in the same way you can in Outlook.  It will also be really helpful if the category from outlook would be imported into the new contacts dbase as well.

Comment 29

[Dirk Schoettler]

Hello. Any progress in sight or planned?
I would like to migrate from Outlook, because it is big and expensive.

Comment 30

[bege10]

Well, I use TB for free, so thank you to all developers. Nevertheless, I'm amazed about this 10-year-old thread of a crucial feature. Unfortunately I am not able to contribute to the solution.

I definitely need the feature to group the contacts by categories. This probably needs a different data base architecture of the address book. As nobody seems to want to do this work, I have this question: Is it as a momentary solution possible to create an add-on that sorts the contacts by e.g. a user defined field.? Additionally, could  this add-on read all the categories in this field and show them in a drop down field to select?

Comment 31

[Dirk Schoettler]

If it helps:
There is an add-on called "MoreFunctionsForAddressBook" (ex: MoreColsForAddressBook) which extends the database with categories and additional fields. It is also supported by some external synching software like Mobile Master.

Since it isn't available at the central add-on site from Mozilla, but only on the homepage of the developer, it's not easily found:
https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html

Comment 32

[bege10]

Thank you, Dirk. This helps, indeed. Hard to believe that I was waiting for a solution so long and it was already waiting for me.
I hope many other users will find this add-on, too.

Comment 33

[Rolf Gloor]

The Problem is, that it is an add-on.
It sometimes works.
But if you are depending on another add-on like gContactSync (to sync with Google Contacts), it start to become problematic.

That is why I strongly recommend to have important basic functionality (like tags, categories, more and flexible fields, etc.) built into the base system.

However, the address book is in work. Let's hope that the next major release surprises us with many new features in the plain thunderbird. :-)

Comment 35

[Dirk Schoettler]

Hello, in February Rolf Gloor mentioned "basic functionality". What about a lean, simple approach?

Obviously, the address book of Mozilla (and before Netscape) was inspired by the Palm PDA, as can be seen by the four custom fields per contact. I think in the good old days of Netscape there was even a direct synchronizing conduit. 

The Palm allowed one category per contact - so it was a straight 1:1 relationship. Unfortunately, this field wasn't implemented back then, but would this be a compromise?

1. An additional field for 1 category should keep the amount of work (relatively) low. Additional fields like birthday were added before.

2. Though it is not as flexible as group-tags (with a 1-to-many relationship), it would offer a criteria for sorting and syncing contacts.

3. An "official" field would be better supported or accepted by other software - e.g. MyPhoneExplorer for Android Smartphones denies to use add-ons to be independent from proprietary solutions.

4. The user logic/interface would conform to the Lightning extension from the official Mozilla Calender project, which offers also a category field for dates.

5. The solution wouldn't "endanger" add-ons like MoreFunctionsForAddresBook, which offers a lot more than category-tags.

Comment 36

[yan]

I think it would be perfect to have a functionality such as the "intelligent folders" for E-Mails. That way there is just one single copy of every contact, but the possibility to filter them by category. It would make updating contact easier because now, a contact that exists in various address books needs to be updated in every one of them.

Comment 38

[Óvári]

Is bug 204070 a duplicate of this? Thank you

Comment 40

[IT Support]

Note that "categories" in Outlook are stored in a multi-value string named property "Keywords". If something like tags or categories were implemented in Thunderbird, the Outlook categories could be mapped to them.

Comment 41

[Óvári]

Hi Ben, Geoff, Rob, Magnus and Ryan,

Can the Thunderbird core team please implement something like "Tags" or "Categories" in the Address Book before Thunderbird 91 ESR?

Tags are already available in the Mail and Calendar modules. Adding "Categories" (aka "Tags") to the core Address Book would provide more consistency across the Thunderbird program.

IT Support has done a lot of work with Thunderbird's support of Outlook 2010 and later. Outlook 2010 is no longer supported and people can then move more easily from Outlook to Thunderbird with Thunderbird 91 ESR.

The CardBook add-on also has Categories that add-on could help with the core Address Book in Thunderbird.

"IT Support @ Henk" as provided significant contribution of three months:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/log?rev=henk
It would be good to see that the core developers implement something like tags or categories before Thunderbird 91 ESR, so the Outlook categories could be mapped to them.

What do you think?

Thank you

Comment 42

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

This won't be happening before 91. And please don't hit everybody you know with NI requests.

Comment 43

[Óvári]

Is something like tags or categories on the Thunderbird development roadmap for the near future? Thank you

Comment 44

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Would like address tagging yes, maybe for the next release after 91.

Comment 45

[Richard Leger]

Hi Alessandro,

A suggestion for you... if tags are implemented for contacts grouping... why not also implement tags for email address grouping?

It may be usefull to allow tags on email addresses within contact, especially those with multiple addresses, to be used in addition or replacement of mailing list / distribution list...

So in compose windows you could use tags to quickly identify/generate a set of email addresses...

e.g #all_staff #team1 #projectX #eventLambda

In compose window, ones a tag is validated into pill, a + sign prefix could allow to expand it to check list of email addresses associated to it...

That would be helpful and easier to maintain than mailing list as per say... though they could appear as mailing list into the compose window...

This would also help keeping mailing lists up-to-date when email address of contact may change... as with tags the mailing list would be generated automatically dynamically based on contact info... and not hardcoded in a list as currently...

Comment 46

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

So in compose windows you could use tags to quickly identify/generate a set of email addresses...

Wouldn't be this identical to an Address Book list?
I think the mechanism is exactly the same.

We should definitely have a better UI for the pills to identify and allow "expanding" or "peaking into" an AB List.
I think this bug references a completely different thing.

Comment 47

[Richard Leger]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #46)

So in compose windows you could use tags to quickly identify/generate a set of email addresses...

Wouldn't be this identical to an Address Book list?
I think the mechanism is exactly the same.

Well yes and no...

Currently your create an AB list and add email addresseses manually to it... so it is a static list of email addresses... but there is no link between AB contact email addresses and AB list email addresses... if you change the contact email address it does not change it in the list. You have to manually remember in which list you put the address to remember updating it... also from contact view you cannot see list membership for their email address...

What may be usefull is ability to handle AB list
more dynamically by either:

• add a contact to the list and choose which email address from contact to use (if multi set) - from within the AB List edit view
  or
• add an email address to a list - from the AB contact edit view - via a tag (or list name) associated to the email address - this way you can also know quickly which list a contact email address belong to...

Then you can use # character in compose window recipient field to lookup for a list (or group of contacts?) as opposed to a just a contact...

In both case it would result in an list of contact email addresses, but the dynamic list would also allow to have email address updated (or removed) automatically from the list when contact is updated (or deleted) from AB (probably via a prompt for confirmation). The same may go for Display Name if it can be handled within a list... along side email address...

I thought this bug was for implementing tags in AB that is why I mentioned it here but can always be raised in a separated bug if relevant. Tags on contacts and tags on contacts (for contact groups) email addresses (for list association) may be two different things perhaps.

Comment 51

[chrizilla]

I am very sorry, I was unaware that Outlook Express has been discontinued.