How can I set Thunderbird's "Recipient" column to display my email address rather than a friendly name?

Question

After configuring a single, unified Inbox within Outlook 2007 to unify multiple email accounts, I found Thunderbird 3's Smart Folder feature. It works great, providing individual inboxes for each of your email accounts and a unified inbox which provides a unified, virtual view of those other inboxes.

Thunderbird is smart enough so what when I reply to an email addressed to a specific email account, the reply is "From" that email address.

In order to know which inbound email was to which of my accounts, I added the "Recipient" column to the inbox Smart Folder:

What's displayed in the Recipient column depends on how the sender/sender's email client addresses the email. If they send it to just "[e-mail]" without specifying a friendly name, the Recipient column displays "[e-mail]" and there's no ambiguity about which account the email was sent to.

However, if the sender has me in their address book (likely stored with a friendly name), it will be addressed as "Howard Camp [[e-mail]]" and then show in the Recipient column as "Howard Camp".

The problem is that if someone emails me with a friendly name at another of my email accounts (e.g. "Howard Camp [[e-mail]]", the Recipient column will also display "Howard Camp" and I can't tell which account it's to until I open the message and/or look at the details.

How can I configure Thunderbird to always display my email address rather than the sender-specified friendly name in the Recipient column?

Answer 1

I hit this question while searching for the exact same thing as the OP, on the current Thunderbird version (12) the show address extension is available!

Just click Tools -> Add ons -> search for add ons "show address" and install.

Answer 2

There's a Show Address Extension but unfortunately not compatible with TB 3

Answer 3

One way is to not use Recipient and use Account instead. I have all of my accts named something nice and short like MrStatic@GM