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Mozilla Thunderbird's address book only supports an "email" and an "alternate email" field, not an unbounded list - and not even, say, 4 addresses, which is not uncommon for someone with some kind of server name alias, and both a work and home address.
Is there any interesting way around this restriction (other than multiple address book entries with the same values in other fields but different emails?)
einpoklum
Posted 2015-10-05T17:23:15.280
Reputation: 5 032
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User senooken posted a link-only answer that was deleted on that basis. However, their recommendation might be a solution for you.
CardBook (see details here) replaces the built-in address book with one based on the CardDAV and vCard standards (and, of course, imports the existing Thunderbird address book). It provides a long list of nice-looking features. It's highly rated by users, but I haven't personally tested it.
Specific to your requirements, the features include:
fixer1234
Posted 2015-10-05T17:23:15.280
Reputation: 24 254
0
Thunderbird does not currently (38.3.0, 2015-10-05) support more than two email addresses per contact without using a plugin.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/991749
Note: I do not use the plugin referenced in that thread nor can I vouch for its quality or trustworthiness.
The link is to a similar question asked on Mozilla's support web site. A reader there suggested this add-on: https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html. Note that the web site has an expired certificate, so you will likely get a warning that the site is untrustworthy. Proceed at your own discretion.
The questioner at that site indicated that the add-on didn't work. A moderator posted this link with instructions on how to manually install an add-on: http://chrisramsden.vfast.co.uk/3_How_to_install_Add-ons_in_Thunderbird.html. The questioner accepted that answer, implying that it worked.
The add-on web site mentions Thunderbird V38, so the add-on may be more current than the old link and outdated certificate would suggest. Still, it might be prudent to make a backup copy of the Thunderbird profile before testing this. – fixer1234 – 2015-10-05T23:23:08.520
I would definitely tread cautiously here. That plugin does not look outright harmful but it does not feel trustworthy, either. Regardless, the point in my first sentence is still true, verified with version 38.3.0 this afternoon. – None – 2015-10-06T01:40:30.910
1If it was a "mainstream" add-on, it would probably be directly installable and listed in the "find add-ons" page, so it's definitely a low budget operation. I was suprised not to be able to find any other add-on for this problem. I'm hoping someone brave will test it and comment back. – fixer1234 – 2015-10-06T01:52:21.787
This is an old question that just got bumped, and looks like you never got a satisfactory answer. If you think like a database person, you don't want to replicate data or maintain it in multiple locations. And if you look inside the address book for the contact detail, it can be a problem needing to know which contact to look under if you use multiple contacts for the same person and don't replicate all of the information in each one. That could be an issue for non-email fields. But the question is specifically about email addresses, and those are handled transparently by Thunderbird. (cont'd) – fixer1234 – 2019-06-01T20:17:48.083
If you start to type a contact, it will display all matching email addresses regardless of how those are organized across address book entries; you just pick the one you want. The fact that you asked this question implies that you have a use case where that isn't adequate. Can you add a little detail to more precisely define the use case issue you need to solve? There might be solutions or workarounds beyond using the built-in address book functionality in the obvious way. – fixer1234 – 2019-06-01T20:17:56.300
1@fixer1234: IIRC the context was viewing, rather than writing, email. You want all past addresses to be associated with the same contact. – einpoklum – 2019-06-01T21:08:10.523