Comments on: Setting a default email address in Address Book

By: Rob Record

Rob Record — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:56:13 +0000

THANKYOU Robert! Awesome!!

This has saved me no end of frustration :)

By: Assaf

Assaf — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:47:16 +0000

It’s complete madness that Apple neglect little, but important, things like this!

By: Robert Stainsby

Robert Stainsby — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 07:24:53 +0000

My “Set Primary Addresses” Address Book plug-ins, available free from my website, might also be of help here. They provides a user interface to examine and change the “primary” tag that Apple uses in the internal Address Book database.

Some users have reported that the address marked as primary becomes the default when adding the address to a group. My own (limited) testing seems to confirm this. So the plug-ins could save you from setting the address separately for each group. Like the “Edit Distribution List…” menu item, the plug-ins work for phone numbers and street addresses as well as email.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t affect the default email used for the person when you type their name directly into a message. Like those who have commented above, I would love to find a way to control this.

By: nerradv

nerradv — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 04:51:42 +0000

Yoram is correct. I have sent this to Apple feedback multiple times. It drives me crazy.

By: Yoram

Yoram — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:01:34 +0000

It seems that this tip only works when sending to a group which includes the contact. When entering the person’s name in Mail, the default address is not automatically chosen as first option. In fact, the mail address top of the list in Mail seems arbitrary to me. I have tried to influence this, but with no success to date.