By default, you have a Personal Address book and a Collected Addresses 
address book. Whenever you send an email, the address you use will be 
added to the Collected Addresses address book. You can use the 
instructions Blaine provided below to turn this behavior off altogether 
or have these addresses stored anywhere you want, such as in the 
Personal Address book. In Windows, you can find this under Tools -> 
Options instead of Edit -> Preferences.

It looks like Blaine didn't include the message he was replying to, but 
I think you said you had a third address book. The default when 
importing addresses from elsewhere is to use My Address book, so if you 
have such a address book then it probably came about when you had 
Thunderbird grab addresses from other applications during the install 
process or you already imported some addresses. Note you should be able 
to copy all of your addresses from one address book into another and 
then you can make the change Blaine describes below to get and keep just 
one address book.

I personally use two address books. My Personal Address book is where I 
add any new addresses by hand. This is also the address book I sync with 
my Google Contacts. I still use Collected Addresses to keep all of the 
outgoing addresses I've ever used. I do this to keep my personal address 
book from getting too cluttered. Occasionally I'll use a new system, and 
I won't have an address in the new system or my Google Contacts, but I 
can move it from my Collected Addresses if I want to.

On 01/12/2014 11:06 PM, Blaine Clark wrote:
> When you reply or write to someone new, that address is automatically
> added to the 'New' address book. By default there are several address
> books being Personal, Collected, Newand Friendsif I remember right. You
> can choose to keep all your addresses in one book, you're given control
> of that choice when you add an email address manually. If you want even
> the addresses that you don't add manually to go to a particularbook like
> those new ones that go into the 'New' book, this sequence ought to do
> it. I'm using T-bird in Linux so there might be some differences in the
> menu, but here goes;
> Edit > Preferences > Composition >Addressing > Automatically add
> outgoing addresses to my: New. Arrow to whatever book you want to set.
>
> No Microsoft garbage used here, sent by a very satisfied Linux-Mint
> <http://www.linuxmint.com/> user (a former disgruntled Microsoft user).
> You could check out Vinux, Linux for the visually impaired
> <http://wiki.vinuxproject.org/>.
> This email and any attachments are not virus scanned either, that's up
> to you poor Microsoft users to deal with.
> I'd rather be a wild and wacky Linux Penguin than a docile,
> domesticated, Microsoft sheep.
>
> Linux user 546139. <https://linuxcounter.net/cert/546139.png>
>
>
>      VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
> Archived on the World Wide Web at
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-- 
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail


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