Dummy E-mail Addresses

Thunderbird cannot handle contacts without e-mail addresses in mailing lists. So I had to write a workaround that would add an e-mail address to any contacts without an e-mail address. The e-mail addresses are in the form: where ... is random numbers. I know it is ugly, but the alternative is having a broken, unsynchronizable address book.

The dummy e-mail address is not required for all contacts without e-mail addresses; only those contacts that are in mailing lists must have an e-mail address. However, version 0.2 adds that e-mail address to all contacts without one.

I filed Bug 492695 for the bug in Thunderbird.

Version 0.2

In version 0.2 the dummy e-mail address is added to all contacts which do not already have an e-mail address. However, there is a way to change this behavior to only add the address when absolutely necessary.
To enable the preference in version 0.2:

1. Go to Tools -> Options or Edit -> Preferences in the main Thunderbird window, then click on Advanced.
2. You should see a button labeled Config Editor... on the General tab. Click it.
3. Type dummyEmail in the textbox.
4. Double-click the row that appears to make the value change to false. This won't completely disable the dummy e-mail address, and you may have to reset your address book to remove existing dummy e-mail addresses, or update the contacts in Gmail.

To reset the address book go to the gContactSync menu in the Address Book window and click Preferences. Then go to the Accounts tab and click Reset All Synced ABs. Restart Thunderbird and synchronize again.

Version 0.3

Version 0.3 will have the dummyEmail preference set to false (only when necessary) by default.

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