Set preferred addresses for Address Book groups

My "Set Primary Addresses" Address Book plug-ins, available free from http://web.mac.com/rjsdev , might also be of help here. They provide a user interface to examine and change the "primary" tag that Apple uses in the internal Address Book database.

It seems that the address used for a group is not actually chosen arbitrarily. Some of my users have reported that the address marked as primary is used by default, and 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.

If you want to use this feature with smart groups, you have to select a regular group and then edit> edit distribution group, and then you can see your smart groups. If you're like me and you don't use any regular groups, only smart groups, you must create a regular group.

Great find! I use a group list to stay in touch with some friends from high school. Just a few weeks ago I realized my e-mails were going to one friend's wife, whose e-mail address I had stored in his address card.

Also, try setting your distribution list on your laptop and then sync it with .Mac to your desktop. It gets screwed up. I send out regular mails to several large groups, and I have to check the distribution list every time to be sure that it goes out to the right email address. This frustration and Apple's failure to address this problem with .Mac syncing for a couple years now has forced me to buy a Buik emailing program.

It is very unfortunate that this tip only works when sending to a group. There is no way to set a deafult address for sending an email to individual contacts. 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.

Wow! Super cool!

-systemsboy