Contacts
Address books, groups, and the two books CodaMail keeps for you.
The Contacts Screen
Click Contacts in the sidebar. The left column lists your address books and, under each, its groups. The middle column lists the contacts in the selected book or group, and the right column shows the selected contact. The search box searches the selected book; Advanced Search on the toolbar searches by any field across all books, and a search can be saved for reuse.
Your address books
- Personal Addresses: your main book. Every contact you create goes here unless you choose another book.
- Collected Recipients: filled in automatically with every address you send to, so autocomplete can offer it next time. You can turn this off or point it at another book under Settings → Preferences → Contacts.
- Trusted Senders: filled in when Allow remote resources is set to from trusted senders and you click Always allow from <sender> on a message's remote-image banner. Senders here load images and are treated as "known" without asking.
- Additional books you create, for a club, a project or a family. Each syncs to your devices as its own address book. Guide: Multiple Address Books.
The three-dot menu at the top of the book list creates, renames and deletes books and groups.
Working with Contacts
- Create new contact opens a form with name, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, a photo, birthday, organization and notes. The Contact form mode preference chooses whether it opens on the home or work fields. Add more fields with the "Add field" dropdown.
- Groups: select contacts and use Assign to group on the More menu, or drag them onto a group. Typing a group's name in the composer's To field expands to all its members.
- Copy to on the More menu copies a contact into another book; dragging a contact onto a book offers Move or Copy. Forward vCard on the same menu opens a new message with the contact attached as a .vcf file.
- Compose to a contact by clicking any email address on the contact card, or by selecting contacts and clicking the compose icon.
- Print contact prints the card. QR Code on the More menu shows the contact as a QR code that a phone can scan straight into its address book.
- Saved searches: after an Advanced Search, Save search in the book menu keeps it as an entry in the book list, so a search like "everyone at example.com" is one click away.
- Import contacts from vCard (.vcf) or CSV files exported from another provider or program, into the book you choose, with an option to replace the book's contents.
- Export contacts as vCard: everything, or just the selected contacts. vCard is the universal format; every mail program and phone imports it.
- vCards in email: when a message has a .vcf attached, the message view offers Add vCard to addressbook, and the composer's Attach vCard sends one of your identities as a contact card.
Deleted contacts are gone immediately; there is no trash for contacts. Export first if you are reorganizing.
Why Contacts Matter for Privacy
Several privacy decisions in the mail screen are made differently for people you know:
- Remote images: with Allow remote resources set to from my contacts or from trusted senders, mail from those books loads images without the banner. With the Remote images setting at Proxy images from unknown senders, known senders load directly and strangers go through the proxy.
- Return receipts: the receipt preference can answer automatically for contacts or trusted senders and ask or ignore for everyone else.
So an address in your contacts is a small statement of trust. Keeping unknown mailing lists and shops out of Personal Addresses, and letting Collected Recipients hold them instead, keeps that trust meaningful. If you would rather no one be exempt, leave Allow remote resources on never and set Remote images to Proxy all images.
Contacts on Your Devices
Every address book syncs over CardDAV to iPhone, iPad, Android, macOS, Windows, Thunderbird and most other contact apps, with a sync token from Settings → DAV Server. Changes made on any device appear everywhere, including here. Setup: Syncing Calendars, Tasks and Contacts.
Next: Privacy by Default.