Panther’s Mail: Auto-complete doesn’t work for company names
Posted by Pierre Igot in: MacintoshDecember 21st, 2003 • 11:38 pm
I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed this before, but today I tried to insert the e-mail address of a software company that I have listed in my Address Book in the “To:” field by typing the first few letters of the name of the company and… it simply wouldn’t work.
It looks as if the auto-completion only works for the First Name and Last Name fields. If you have an address book entry that has neither first name nor last name but is only a company with an e-mail address, it doesn’t work.
Yet Address Book does encourage you to create such entries by providing the option to check a box indicating that the record that you are editing is for a company:
When you check this box, the “Company” field becomes the first one to appear in big letters at the top of the record, in lieu of the First Name and Last Name fields (and the icon for the record changes from a personal ID card to a drawing of a factory).
In addition, if you don’t put anything in the First Name and Last Name fields, the Company field is used for the purpose of listing the record in the “Name” column in the middle of the Address Book window.
In other words, all signs are here in Address Book that Mac OS X treats the company name field as a possible substitute for the First Name and Last Name fields.
In light of this, it seems to me that the user should at least have the option to include company names in the auto-completion feature in Mail.
December 22nd, 2003 at Dec 22, 03 | 4:27 am
What I find even more bothersome is that Mail ignores nicknames in auto-completion too. Even Pine has since since the day I sent my first e-mail…
Why did they include the nickname field in the new version of AddressBook when they don’t use the contents of this field in Mail?!?
We do not know.
December 22nd, 2003 at Dec 22, 03 | 4:40 am
Good question :-). I believe that the Nickname field was already there in previous versions, though. I never use it myself, but you’re right: If it’s there, it should work as expected.
December 22nd, 2003 at Dec 22, 03 | 9:47 am
Yes, it should. I have tons of people in Addressbook whose name starts with Chris… and I don’t want to remember all of their last names (which sometimes are as common as the Chris prefix and therefore not particularly more helpful).
Probably I should stop to rant about the same topic for a second time and write a bug report instead.
Oh terrible coercive forces poking us to do productive things instead of rambling our way through the internet.
December 23rd, 2003 at Dec 23, 03 | 12:00 am
I guess I am fairly fortunate that most of my correspondents have unique names.
My “bug report” (an enhancement request, really) has already been sent :).