Any Future Netscape (Screwy Address Book)??

Much as I hate to, moving to Outlook Express because of Netscape's screwy address book that:
a) creates a new card every time you add a person to a different list within an address book; which means you have to make changes multiple times and if you delete person from one list and leave on another, you don't know which one was deleted (unless of course you add a tag to the name)
b) just is unreliable; sometimes it will copy names from one address book to another and sometimes it won't; sometimes it keeps new names you've put in and sometimes it doesn't.

Is this improved at all in 7.1 to make it worth upgrading?

And is anything going to be done to improve netscape now that it's been dumped by AOL and losing shares.

The only attraction at this point of Outlook is if someone comes up wiht something better, at least I'll have more standardized, exportable mail and address books. (A girl can dream.)

VERY FRUSTRATED!!

Carol in dc

 

carol in dc,

Address book lists are strange creatures:

Following comments and suggestions are based on personal experience and observations of Moz 1.4f INSTALLED on Win98se machine. (OS should not matter, and should also apply to NS 7.1)

When you create a NEW address card via Address Book window - New Card - you enter First Name (field 1) and Last Name (field 2) Moz generates "display" (field 3). You enter "Email" (field 5) etc. This card will display correctly regardless of what you have selected in the Address Book VIEW menu.

When you "collect" addresses, Moz has no way of parsing the address (it does not know first name from last name) so it does the best it can and enters data in the "display" (field 3) and "email" in field 5.

When you "type" an entry in the List properties window, Moz does the same thing and adds the card to your addressbook. (No field 1 or field 2 -ONLY field 3 and "email ") You can verify this by looking at the properties of a collected address or one that you added to the "list" properties.

The "Auto Complete" feature searches existing address books on FIELD 3 as this is the only common field for both created and collected cards.

If you use the auto complete feature, ensure that the full address is in the address box (select full address from drop down list) before you select enter.

Whether or not an address shows correctly in the "List" or not is dependent on what you have set in VIEW|Show names as| - if you select "display" it shows correctly, if you select anything else, it will show as Blank with the "email" address. It will be at the top of the list if sorting is in ascending order.

Moz is very particular about the syntax of entries that you TYPE in the List - properties and does what it can with what you enter.

I could go into more detail, but I hope you follow my basic logic.

Knowing this, you can see that "collecting" addresses and "TYPING" data in the List properties window is a bad idea. Drag & Drop works as it should. Selecting from the "auto-complete" drop down works also, but keep in mind that these entries are based on field (3) which may or may not display correctly depending on the properties of the entry and VIEW|Show name as| selection AND may create a card to your address book that may contain bogus data....

Bottom line suggestion:

Start with a CLEAN address book with NO lists.
Create the LIST- and DRAG & DROP entries to List from existing entries.
If you use the "auto-complete" feature, ensure that the properties for the entry includes Fields 1 & 2. or it may not display correctly.

Cleaning up your existing Personal Address Book may be more of a problem than it is worth. If you want to try, do the following:

Open Address Book window.
Select Personal Address Book
Select View|Show Name as|Firstlast ascending order
This should bring ALL entries that DO NOT have a Field 1 or 2 to the top of the list -
Delete these entries.
Deleting an entry from the MAIN address book will delete it from any list.
Deleting an entry from a LIST will not delete it from the MAIN address book.

Hope this helps to clear up your problem. If you have questions please let me know.

Hope this is of some help...

regards :

__________________

 

Future of Netscape??

I am still wondering about the Future of Netscape -- will they keep improving it? Is there are new version in the works now?? Are you guys in touch with them on problems we find here or do we have to go to their news.group and suggest stuff?

On address book. i'll give it a look at it -- i've got a few thousand addresses in about 15 address books including another 40 lists, many overlapping, so you can see how frustrating this can be.

I think I can ad more address books on some sub topics which will help.

It WOULD be nice if they would fix it if you didn't have TWO copies of every address in a book that you have on two lists inside the book! (As was true in 4.7 and is true in Outlook Express)

One thing i DO like about netscape (7.02) is it makes it easy to manage my 5 email addresses -- with about 3 more I may be adding -- and moving messages between. i've been playing with outlook and moving between identifies/email addresses annoying. Like some aspects of their address book, though.

Also, might get the 7.1 disk and up grade, despite all complaints keep hearing--7.02 is already so slow so may wait til get faster computer.

 

Saving Address Books as LDIF Problem?

I bought 7.1 and the book (which I NEVER do so that's a big commitment) but haven't had the 6 or 7 hours to just work on address book and check out if it's doing screwy things still and work arounds for the inadequacies in the programming.

Didn't see any differences between 7.1 address book and 7.02 which i'm keeping for now since not quite ready to install 7.1

MY QUESTION: It's just easier to save address books as LDIFs as I change them than to save the other files in the address data base folder.

But will this cause problems?? Or has it caused since I've deleted address books and replaced them with older ldif's after problems arose?

Will be back with more questions after I get back to the address book...

 

corolindc,

Although the suggestions I made above state that they apply to 7.1, I beleive they hold true for 7.0x.

If the method for adding names to a list are followed as posted above, you will not have duplicate names in the parent addressbook. I have tried to replicate some of you problems and I can not do so IF I enter data as suggested.

I am sorry, but I do not understand what you are saying. When you change an Address Book entry, it is changed in the parent addressbook, unless you create a NEW card with same name.
If you want to EDIT an entry, EDIT the card - not create a new one.

The program is not inadequate, it does what it is designed to do - and will if you do it correctly - granted the instructions are not very clear in some areas, but most of the questions are answered via the BBS -

Please feel free to use whatever email program you wish. But I have found NS & Mozilla to be far supperior to M$.

As to the future of NS, I beleive 7.1 is the last of THAT breed. However Mozilla lives on -

Hope this is of some assistance.

regards:captjlddavis

 

Saving Address Books as LDIFs

You wrote you didn't understand---
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY QUESTION: It's just easier to save address books as LDIFs as I change them than to save the other files in the address data base folder.

Let's me say it clearly:

I save address books by going to EXPORT and saving as LDIF.

I don't go to the hzxmcvmz.slt data folder where the address books are saved as MABs and save those.


My question: if I re-import these LDIF address books because the other ones get ******* up, is that a problem??

Is there any critical reason I should be saving the MAB files in
hzxmcvmz.slt

As for other points, I haven't had time to study and test those methods and see if they solve the problems but will report when I do

Carol