Contacts "from" name is still an email address?

R

riverjack

Sometimes when I get email from people who I already have in my address
book the "from" field in my inbox still just lists their email address,
not their name. I know they are in my address book because I can right
click on their email in the preview pane and select "edit this
contact," which brings up a valid contact card with correct "last
message received" data.

I find this rather annoying since I don't want to have to search my
brain to remember who [email protected] is (sorry...my friends
are mostly in the age group when having this kind of email address was
cool...they just never changed to the new cool...anyway). How can I
forge Entourage to show me their names in the from field?
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

Sometimes when I get email from people who I already have in my address
book the "from" field in my inbox still just lists their email address,
not their name. I know they are in my address book because I can right
click on their email in the preview pane and select "edit this
contact," which brings up a valid contact card with correct "last
message received" data.

I find this rather annoying since I don't want to have to search my
brain to remember who [email protected] is (sorry...my friends
are mostly in the age group when having this kind of email address was
cool...they just never changed to the new cool...anyway). How can I
forge Entourage to show me their names in the from field?
Click to expand...

You can't. Entourage shows the sender's Display Name by default - when there
is one. (In these cases you can sometimes only find the email address by
hovering over the Display Name, or opening the Source or headers.)

When you see the email address only, that's because the sender has not
entered a Display Name for their account in their own email client. (This
sort of person, in my experience, does not have the faintest idea what
you're talking about when you suggest to them that they should register a
Display Name. They usually say "What's a display name?" and ask me tell them
how to do it without even telling me what email client they're using. Most
often, they're using a free email address at Yahoo or Hotmail and accessing
it from their browser, usually Internet Explorer Windows. I give up at that
point.) The Display Name is simply nowhere in the email message - it cannot
be found there.

When Entourage finds the correct person when you click "Edit This Contact",
that's because your action has asked it to search its Contact database
(contacts YOU have created) for the email address. It can do that quickly,
but you're already doing it the best way. You have to ask Entourage to look
up the address in your own Contacts. You cannot expect to find the display
name in the headers of the email itself, because it's not there. (And you
can't even edit the Sender header manually, since it's illegal to fake a
sender, so there's no means given to do it.) Sorry.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
 
R

riverjack

Wow! Thanks for the quick response. Too bad there isn't a way to do it,
but with that good of an explanation, I'm not that put out. It's only a
minor annoyance, nothing big.
 
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