Defining a default recipient email address in Address Book

Question

As far as I can tell, there is not an explicit way to define one email address as a default, if more than one are associated with a contact in the Address Book.
Some things I have tried or considered include:
(a) using Edit>Edit Distribution List, selecting All, and selecting defaults (doesn't work),
(b) creating hundred of separate groups for each of the hundreds of contacts with multiple email addresses in my Address Book, and using Edit>Edit Distribution List to select the default email to use for each group (lots of work, lots of clutter, hard to maintain),
(c) adding the default email address twice and using the one that appears twice in the list (the duplicated email address only appears once in the list that appears when addressing an email),
(d) deleting all email addresses except one (with associated loss of data),
(e) cutting and pasting all non-default emails to the Notes field (with associated loss of recognition of those addresses by the junk filter and inability to use them to send emails),
(f) copying the default email address to the Notes field, and always sending email by opening Address Book, finding the recipient, noting the default email based on what is in Notes, right-clicking the matching email address, and choosing Send Mail (yuck),
(g) defining a custom email type called "default" to flag the default email address (loss of information about whether default email is Home/Work/Other, does not show up in Mail, does not export to Bento, does not export to FileMaker Pro through Bento),
(h) exporting Address Book data from Bento to FileMaker Pro, manually adding a flag in FileMaker Pro to indicate the default email address, and always sending email by opening FileMaker Pro, finding the recipient, and sending email from the default email address (must constantly re-synchronize Address Book data with FileMaker without proper keys, difficult to maintain),
*(i )* giving up on Address Book, and send all emails from a FileMaker Pro database (with loss of Address Book synchronization capabilities, difficulty in adding new email addresses from Mail, etc.).
It should not be this hard to accomplish such a basic task.
1) Is there a direct way to flag one email address as default that I have missed?
2) Does anyone have any other workarounds or tricks that might work?
Thanks,
-b

Answer 1

Mulder wrote:
This "feature" of Entourage doesn't "just work"; it works only in the context of what the Entourage programmers have designed, and not what Apple has thought of designing into their system applications. Expecting them to be the same is a fantasy.
Whether or not a feature "just works" is defined by a user's experience. When you view a list of email addresses for a contact in Entourage address book, one of them is bold (the same visual feedback that Apple uses when selecting a default email address for Groups). Adjacent to the email addresses is a button that says "Make Default". If you select a different address and click this button, the new email address turns bold, and the next time you address an email to that contact it is automatically selected when you type enough of a contact's name. It probably took me no more than 30 seconds to figure out the first time I saw it, and it automatically selects the correct default address (the one I told it to use) for years without further intervention by me.
In my experience this feature just works, without regard for which company the programmers work for, even though it "works only in the context of what the Entourage programmers have designed", despite the fact that Apple programmers didn't think of it, and without needing to compare it to any other program.
Mulder wrote:
You can't do that, as long as you have multiple addresses stored in Address Book for each contact, and they continue to send you email from various email addresses. Mail and Address Book share information, so when you type enough of a contact's email address to find it in Mail, you can select it as the email address to use, but not as a default, since you already have multiple email addresses stored from these people.
I am fully aware that I can't select a default address in the current version of Address Book. But it is preposterous (and a bit insulting to Apple programmers) if you are suggesting that the programmers "can't do that, as long as you have multiple addresses stored in Address Book". In fact, they have already done it for groups. They were also smart enough to find an intuitive way to control the default sender email and default signature for users who use multiple email accounts and signatures.
Mulder wrote:
If you delete the others and tell them not to email you except from the one address you want to use, that would solve your problem.
That is what I meant by the tail wagging the dog (changing the behavior of not only me but multiple people in my Address Book to get around a missing software feature).
Mulder wrote:
No, you didn't choose it years ago before Mail existed. Mail has existed for over 20 years, and from Day 1 of Mac OS X, so the idea that Entourage preceded it is nonsense.
Nonsense might be a little harsh. In 2000 I compared several email clients before deciding to go with Entourage. This was a year before Mac OS X was released in 2001. That was when I first heard of Apple Mail, and at least according to Wikipedia Apple Mail was derived from NextMail rather than from previous Apple development. I was using System 6 in 1988, and if Apple had an email program back then I was not aware of it (that is about the time Eudora was first written). I also do not remember running into it when I was in charge of selecting an email client to install on all of our departmental Macintoshes in the early 1990's.
At any rate, what I said was "I chose it years ago (before Mail existed) because...". In other words, my point was that my decision to use a Microsoft email program was made before Apple Mail was an option for me to use on my Macintosh computers.
Mulder wrote:> If you want to make your views about Mail or Address Book known to the engineering team at Apple, you can send them Feedback.
Thanks. I gave up on providing feedback to big companies like Microsoft years ago, but I will give it a try with Apple.