I just got an advertisement mail from a company. I wanted to know which email address they used. The new message reader unfortunately only shows "Ben Bucksch (yellow star)", which is not very useful. I clicked on the star, and it showed me@corp.example.net . I haven't used that address for years, so I wondered how the company got it. Clicking on "Details", it turns out that Thunderbird showed the wrong address. Reproduction: 1. Create address book entry with "Fred Flintstone", "Email" address fred@example.com, "Additional Email" address fred@corp.example.net. 2. Send mail to fred@corp.example.net (add *no* realname - delete it when Thunderbird adds it) 3. Open the mail, e.g. in your Sent folder 4. Check the To line 5. Click on the star Actual result: Step 4: Only "Fred Flintstone" is displayed (although the name does not appear in the email) Step 5: The email address fred@example.com is shown, although the mail was sent to fred@corp.example.net . This is the bug. Expected result: Step 4: "Fred Flintstone" is displayed in a special color or in brackets () to denote that the name did not actually appear in the email (important to know whether the sender knew my name). The email address is also displayed, in a smaller font and maybe grey. Step 5: The email address fred@corp.example.net is shown. Importance: This is completely misleading, the client is giving wrong information. See first paragraph. This is basic mail reader functionality, thus by definiton Major.

Note that this is even the "detailed" view. (But even the brief view must show the correct address when requested.)

> 2. Send mail to fred@corp.example.net > (add *no* realname - delete it when Thunderbird adds it) Actually, you can't, TB keeps readding it. You'll just have to believe it, I tried it via netcat / SMTP directly.

If you hover over the name, Thunderbird will display the email address that the email was sent to in a tooltip (though it was only fixed to work properly in today's nightly). The problem here is that we are always displaying the main email address in the edit contact dialog, we should probably either: 1) Display all email addresses (well, just 2 for now, but more later), or 2) Display just the email address that the email was sent to and that matched on the card. I think 2 is probably the better option, but cc'ing Bryan to see what he thinks.

Not a dup. The dup is about the same email address, but different names/people. This bug is about the same person (e.g. myself, the user, in the To field) with different email addresses, and I want to know which one was used in the message.

This is annoying enough to be a stop-ship for me.

Nevermind the last comment, now that I know it, I can work around it. I do think it's wrong and misleading behavior, though. Comment 3 is right, and yes, option 2) is it. When I click next to an To/From name, and TB shows me an email address, then of course I assume that this address was used in the email (and that's what I want to see when I do that).

While this is a slightly different use case than the one described in the first comment of that bug, the fix is the same (ie that bug proposes to do option 2).

As I understood it, bug 474721 comment 4 proposes how the email address display in the header pane works. I think it's a great proposal. This bug here points out that a different address is shown when you click on the star.

Ah, indeed. This is really misleading and should block.

While we'd very much like to get this, if this were the last bug standing, we wouldn't block on it, as it feels like a use case that's likely to effect a very low percentage of users a small amount of the time; marking blocking-thunderbird3-. Patches very much invited, however. If anyone reading this is interested in poking at it, I can point you to the right pieces of code...

endico pointed out to me on IRC today there's a more up-front use case that I overlooked when discussing this bug in today's driver meeting: now that we've got Smart Folders on by default, it means that it's no longer obvious from looking at a mail in your Inbox whether it was sent to your (e.g.) home or work address, since they both say "You". One possible result is that it's now probably even easier to unintentionally reply to a message through a work account rather than a personal one. One consequence I could imagine would include a response to the reply going to an account that isn't checked on weekends and thus causing something time-sensitive to be missed. Another would be language or content flowing through work accounts that wasn't appropriate. As such, I'm back on the fence about whether this one should block. clarkbw & davida, opinions?

Actually, it's even somewhat worse than that: as per comment 0, actual results step 5, it doesn't just say "You", it explicitly claims the incorrect address was used.

(In reply to comment #12) > One possible result is that it's now probably even easier to unintentionally > reply to a message through a work account rather than a personal one. I'm not sure I understand this use case. When you reply a message the composition editor chooses the work or personal account that the message was sent to. There might be issues with the You that we could change and there is another bug for that but it seems parallel to this issue as I understand. Can you explain more? I'm a bit confused.

The mail might not be misaddressed but if you're confused about which account you're using you could easily write something inappropriate. I have problems sending things from the wrong account to begin with. Now that everything is in the same Inbox it will really be confusing. I think the mail header pane is dumbed down too much. Currently if the sender or recipients are found in the user's address book then instead of displaying the name and address it only displays the name, and if the address is yours it just says "You". How about changing it so that it either doesn't do any shortening, or so it doesn't shorten if there is any ambiguity. Dan has 5 different addresses in my address book. When he sends me mail I'd like to see his whole address printed out. I'd like to see the "You" pseudo-address go away. I found it confusing before but its a lot worse now with the combined inbox. Maybe you could still say "You" for people with a single identity, but I'd prefer to see my entire email address printed out in the message header without having to remember each time to double check which account it was sent to. I voted for this. I hope this is fixed before the final release.

> I think the mail header pane is dumbed down too much. > How about changing it ... so it doesn't shorten if there is any ambiguity. Agreed! (I can already see the ridicule: "It can't even get something as simple as showing the From and To correct".) Thunderbird accounts don't help me, because I have many email addresses for different purposes (different companies, private etc.), and they all go to the same mailbox, because they are just aliases or are forwarded, but I don't want them to get mixed up or people even know my other addresses/identities.

(In reply to comment #15) > I think the mail header pane is dumbed down too much. Currently if the sender > or recipients are found in the user's address book then instead of displaying > the name and address it only displays the name, and if the address is yours it > just says "You". A workaround for this is to add yourself to your address book and supply an appropriate name (e.g. "You (Work)"). > How about changing it so that it either doesn't do any shortening, or so it > doesn't shorten if there is any ambiguity. Dan has 5 different addresses in my > address book. When he sends me mail I'd like to see his whole address printed > out. There's an option to disable in Options -> Advanced -> Reading and Display -> "Show only display names for people in my address book". It's a bit out-of-the-way though. (In reply to comment #16) > Thunderbird accounts don't help me, because I have many email addresses for > different purposes (different companies, private etc.), and they all go to the > same mailbox, because they are just aliases or are forwarded, but I don't want > them to get mixed up or people even know my other addresses/identities. In your case, it should be fine, and you'll only see "You" for the primary email address for the account. I tested it with auto-forwarding and multiple identities for the account, and the secondary address shows up without any short-hand. It seems like this is really two bugs: 1) If an email in the header matches the secondary address for a contact, the wrong email shows up (i.e. what the original report was). 2) "You" is ambiguous when dealing with multiple accounts.

This should fix the incorrect email showing up in the edit contact box (#1 of my previous comment).

Jim, thanks for the patch. (And thanks for getting this bug back on track to the original problem.) However, I think the fix will incorrectly modify the address card entry, no? This bug is about the case when the To matches the *secondary* address in the AB card. When you now open the card, and edit it, and fill it with the secondary address, won't the card be saved with the secondary address as primary (and as secondary), overwriting the primary address? I think the problem is that the "Edit Contact" is "dumbed down too much". IMHO, it should always directly go to the full Edit Card dialog with all fields. But at least, it needs to do so in this case when we matched the secondary address (or, in this code place, address from email != address in card).

> 2) "You" is ambiguous when dealing with multiple accounts. Filed bug 519675 about that.

(In reply to comment #19) > However, I think the fix will incorrectly modify the address card entry, no? > This bug is about the case when the To matches the *secondary* address in the > AB card. When you now open the card, and edit it, and fill it with the > secondary address, won't the card be saved with the secondary address as > primary (and as secondary), overwriting the primary address? Good catch. I just changed it so that the dialog doesn't touch the email address. We *should* be able to assume that the email address doesn't need to be changed, since that's what we used as a key to find the address book entry.

If you go down that route, you need to make the email address textbox (in the dialog) readonly.

(In reply to comment #22) > If you go down that route, you need to make the email address textbox (in the > dialog) readonly. Luckily for me, it already is read only, and I don't see any code that changes that attribute.

> it already is read only Oh. Right. Sorry.

There are indeed multiple bugs described here. "Ambiguous You" is bug 478466.

Comment on attachment 403818 [details] [diff] [review] Fix primary email address getting overwritten (checked in) Looks good; r=dmose. Thanks for the patch!

Checked in: http://build.mozillamessaging.com/mercurial/comm-central/rev/a1e5645059a2

Comment on attachment 403818 [details] [diff] [review] Fix primary email address getting overwritten (checked in) Forgot to mark a=dmose on the checkin, but here it is now.