User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/91.0

Steps to reproduce:

Created new email.
Typed start of recipient name.
Selected the first choice offered.

Actual results:

The first choice was for the alternate email address. This seems random.

Expected results:

Primary email address should always be offered first.

Is this changed behavior compared to prior release?

It has the same behavior in 78.

A specific test case. It is very delicate and I can't pin down what specific structure causes it, but it may have to do with the case of the entry. In the following, entering test gives second first, Test gives first first.

Name: Test Test
email:Test@cxxbriarcliff.org
Alternate:testgreenjohnson@gmail.com

open an email and type test in to to line. I see testgreenjohnson@gmail.com as the first choice.

(In reply to Marc Auslander from comment #0)

Expected results:
Primary email address should always be offered first.

If taken as an absolute, that's a wrong expectation. We've just fixed bug 1709799 to return the additional(secondary) email address when that's the only match.

So I think you're saying that if both primary and secondary are matching, we'll want to show the primary. Probably yes. Capitalization shouldn't matter. The algorithm is complicated and considers dozens of things.

In your history with this TB installation, did you write to the alternate of comment 2 (testgreenjohnson@gmail.com) more often than the primary (Test@cxxbriarcliff.org)?

I don't understand the final question, but my name is on comment 2.

If the issue is capitalization as implied in comment 3, I agree that the lookup should be case insensitive since email addresses are case insensitive.

(In reply to Marc Auslander from comment #4)

I don't understand the final question, but my name is on comment 2.

Never mind, my question was going wrong anyway.
Thunderbird counts how often you have used a certain card in your AB (popularityIndex) - higher popularityIndex might push up that card in results. But it's card-based iirc, so it wouldn't affect the priority between primary and additional email address on the same card. I think.

It happens with card-based contacts. The first shown address is always the one that comes first alphabetically. Even when the search term matches the primary address. Example:
A card based contact in the address book has foo@primary.com as primary email and foo@additional.com as secondary email address.
If you type "foo", "foo@p" or even "foo@primary.com" in the To: field, the autocomplete will always try to mail to foo@additional.com since it comes first alphabetically.

I have the same problem. When an email recipient has multiple email addresses, the preferred email address is not listed first in the "To / Cc / Bcc" auto-complete dropdown list like previous versions. Hopefully it can be fixed soonest as it's very annoying and causing me sending to wrong addresses accidentally sometimes.

(In reply to yongkhun from comment #8)

I have the same problem. When an email recipient has multiple email addresses, the preferred email address is not listed first in the "To / Cc / Bcc" auto-complete dropdown list like previous versions. Hopefully it can be fixed soonest as it's very annoying and causing me sending to wrong addresses accidentally sometimes.

some further info, not sure if it's relevant: I am using CardDAV sync with Google Contacts, via TBSync ( https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/tbsync/?src=dp-dl-dependencies ) and Provider for CalDAV & CardDAV ( https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/dav-4-tbsync/?src=cb-dl-rating )

The problem happened in addressbooks synced with TBSync. In TB102 TBSync doesn't work anyway.

When using the new CardDAV function from TB102, the preferred e-mailaddress is listed on top.

To import CardDAV contacts in TB102: Go to Addressbook, click the V-shaped downarrow next to new addressboek, and click the CardDAV option.
When you're asked for a URL, you have to add the URL of the Addressbook itself, and not of the URL of the contactsserver as you would do with TBSync.

This is the behavior since 78 but it was not the behavior in older versions (not sure when it changed). The older versions chose primary email first as expected. The newer versions use an alphabetical sort which makes no sense. There is a reason the email address is "additional". I keep sending email to people's home instead of work address due to this issue, it's highly annoying.

To give more information: I have the regular Thunderbird addressbook and this issue persists in version 102. If there's a workaround for it using carddav or whatever, I am all ears.

Does anyone still see these issues?

I do not see these issues with current beta 113.0b2

Carddav maybe bug 443185

(In reply to Marc Auslander from comment #2)

It has the same behavior in 78.

A specific test case. It is very delicate and I can't pin down what specific structure causes it, but it may have to do with the case of the entry. In the following, entering test gives second first, Test gives first first.

Name: Test Test
email:Test@cxxbriarcliff.org
Alternate:testgreenjohnson@gmail.com

open an email and type test in to to line. I see testgreenjohnson@gmail.com as the first choice.

The above still behaves as reported in 12.10.0.