Section 159. Add New Contacts

159. Add New Contacts

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Just jump right in!

SEE ALSO

156 Send a Message

157 Reply or Forward a Message

To send an email message, you need the recipient's email address. You can store frequently used addresses in the Contacts list (also known as the address book). By default, Thunderbird automatically saves the addresses of the people you send email to so that they are available should you need them again. When needed, you can easily grab addresses from incoming email and add them to the Contacts list as well. In addition, you can manually add addresses to the Contacts list for people you've neither received nor sent emails to.

The address book actually has two sections: Personal Address Book and Collected Addresses . Typically, addresses you enter yourself are stored in the Personal Address Book section, while addresses Thunderbird gathers for you from incoming or outgoing messages are placed in the Collected Addresses section.

159. Add New Contacts

TIPS

To import addresses from an old email program, choose Tools, Import, choose Address Books and click Next , select your email program from those listed and click Next , and click Finish .

To make changes to the way Thunderbird collects outgoing email addresses (or to turn the option off), choose Tools, Options , and on the Advanced page, in the General Settings section, enable the Automatically add outgoing e-mail addresses to my option, and choose the section you want the addresses stored in (such as Collected Addresses ).

To add an email address from an incoming message to your Contacts list, display the message and, in the message header that appears above the message pane, click the sender's address and choose Add to Address Book from the context menu that appears.

1.	Click Address Book Button Click the Address Book button on the Mail toolbar in the main Thunderbird window. The Address Book appears.
2.	Click New Card Button Click the New Card button on the Address Book toolbar. The New Card dialog box appears.
3.	Select Address Section Open the Add to drop-down list and select the section of the address book into which you want to save the new contacteither Personal or Collected .
4.	Type Contact Data Enter the contact data on the Contact tab. At a minimum, you should enter the contact's first and last name and email address. You might also want to select the format (HTML or text) that you want to use when sending messages to this address.
5.	Add Other Data and Click OK If desired, click the Address tab and add the contact's home and/or business addresses and web page addresses. If you enter an address and then later display that contact by opening the Address Book , you can click the Get Map button that appears to open Firefox and display a map to the address. If you have data that you want to enter and you can't find an appropriate field, click the Other tab and enter that data in one of the custom fields. Click OK. The contact appears in the Address Book listing.

NOTE

To make changes to an existing contact, open the Address Book , select the contact, and click the Properties button. For example, you might want to add the email format your contact prefers (such as HTML) to prevent Thunderbird from asking you what format to use each time you send that person an email. To remove the contact, click the Delete button instead.