What you describe was a bug that got fixed, but it was quite a while back - 5 years. So, what Operating System (eg: Windows Vista, 7, 10 , MAC, Linux) are you using and what version of Thunderbird ?

Thanks for the help!

T-Bird version is 68.7.0 (32-bit). WinX is version 1909.

After posting my question, I decided to take a stab at a solution by deleting her data from my T-Bird address book and re-entering it (after restarting T-Bird). My last couple of attempts to send her stuff have apparently worked, so this may have been a one-time data glitch... which strangely I couldn't see so possibly some sort of control character had been inserted.

If there's any recurrence, I'll post again. Otherwise, problem solved!

Please describe the exact process you are using - step by step. For example Click on 'Write' In 'To' field, type: bmr

Before you do anything else, what exactly do you see ? What is being displayed in all the drop down options? Please post an image or if you do not want the image to be seen, you could send me an image of what you see and I'll transcribe details with discretion regarding email addresses.

My email address is: mail at anje dot co dot uk

Where 'at' means '@' and 'dot' means a fullstop/period.

• In Address Book
• Select 'All Address Books'
• Click on 'Email' column header to sort by email address.
• Scroll down to locate email address.
• Check all entries as you may find there is more than one.
• Select each one to check the 'Edit Contact' saved details.

Is there any difference between entries eg: Does one have a 'Nickname' entry ? Is 'Display Name' identical in content and use of Capitals etc.

Seems I posted a comment before I received your reply.

It just happened again. Maybe a coincidence, but it seems most likely when I try to forward something to her. Does that suggest anything?

I followed the steps you listed but found only one entry for my wife and that's the new one I created yesterday.

To reproduce the error: 1. Open an email in Thunderbird's Inbox 2. Click the "Forward" button 3. Type bmr in the "To" field 4. Her full name and e-mail address correctly spelled pops up 5. Click "Send" 6. Receive failure notice by return mail

What I'm seeing in the "To" field looks exactly like:

Barbara Redacted <bmredacted@bellsouth.net>

Thanks for trying!

Test:

What happens if you use the 'Contacts Sidebar' to insert the email address?

If you cannot see the 'Contacts sicebar', enable via 'View' > select 'Contacts Sidebar' or toggle the view using F9 key.

• Select the address book that contains the name of contact.
• select contact and click on 'Add to TO' button

My version looks a bit different from yours -- I went from Tools to Address Book to Personal Address Book to Right-click on her name and selected Write. That worked OK. But it doesn't solve the problem of trying to forward her an e-mail.

have you tried removing what is probably a bad email entry in the collected address book?

re :My version looks a bit different from yours -- I went from Tools to Address Book to Personal Address Book to Right-click on her name and selected Write. That worked OK.

That's because you are selecting a contact by accessing the Address Book first, this proves that the contact in that particular address book is ok, but I'm sure you do not do that when you want to forward an email. You said you were using the autocompletion method after selecting to Forward. This means you could be selecting an entry that is contained in any address book. So I need you to do the test exactly as described and not via Tools > Address Book.

• As your problem is with forwarding an email, I need you to select an email and click on 'Forward'.
• This opens in a new Write email window with forwarded email, but you need to get an email address into the 'TO' field. I do NOT want you start typing in the TO field because I want you to test using the 'Contacts Sidebar'.
• Now, make sure the 'Contacts Sidebar' is enabled as per instructions and looks like the image I supplied.
• In the 'Contacts Sidebar', I need you to select the address book where you put the contact, I guess it is 'Personal Address Book'. As you could see in the image I previously supplied, there is a drop down where you select the address book.
• Tell me in what address book, do you store your wife as a contact.
• This will display a list of names of people in eg: 'Personal Address Book', select the email address/name for your wife
• Click on 'Add to TO' button.
• Enter some text and click on 'Send'

Please report back on results.

I think there was a bad entry in the Collected Addresses file that was causing the problem. Once I removed that, forwarding works fine. Thanks for all your help on this!

Oops! After working OK several times, it threw me the same nonsense again:

Sorry, we were unable to deliver your message to the following address.

<"bmr >> Barbara Redacted <bmredacted"@bellsouth.net>:
550: 5.2.1 <"bmr >> Barbara Redacted <bmredacted"@bellsouth.net>... Addressee unknown, relay= [66.163.184.204]

I had simply clicked the "reply" button in Tbird and typed her initials to fill in the addressee. I've replaced all the instances of her address I've been able to find, so I'm pretty sure it's a program glitch.

Here's the header that was associated with this e-mail outgoing:

bmr >> Barbara Redacted <bmredacted@bellsouth.net <>

To me, the punctuation looks weird! But note that the forum text editor has added to what I see, which ends with the first [bellsouth.net <>] It added ="" and </bmredacted@bellsouth.net> WEIRD!

and every time you click reply the "bad" from address your wife has in her email setup is being automatically added back into Thunderbird collected addresses because it is not there.

I think you need to look at what your wife is sending you or even in her outgoing mail settings.

In Thunderbird the from is set in account settings, were you can set not only your name and address but also a reply to address that is different again. But what applies in whatever mail client you wife is using I can not begin to guess. Especially if she is using a web mail or phone mail.

Barb uses Tbird mostly. Her e-mail address is NOT in my Collected Addresses folder, so that's NOT where it's coming from. The From address on her latest e-mail to me is correct as far as I can see.

Anybody else have a hypothesis as to where all this strange punctuation is coming from? Why do I copy and paste one thing and then see something else entirely in the forum version? I'm suspicious that there may be some sort of invisible characters getting added to stuff that results in these weird additions.

Here's what I see in the header of her latest e-mail to me: Barbara M. Redacted M.Div. <bmredacted@bellsouth.net> and when I try to forward something to her, it turns into bmr >> Barbara Redacted <bmredacted@bellsouth.net <>

which has a bunch of crap added, apparently by Tbird. I sure didn't do it!

The forum tries to interpret what it sees as HTML code. Placing a space at the start of each line stops that, and is what I have done to your earlier post so I could read it. I did nothing with the lines of dots as they did nothing for me. Just be aware word wrapping does not work once you put in a space, so format your reply so only the "code" parts are on space prefixed lines.

What happens if you click reply? Seriously do you see the change? If not then the problem is in your address book. Is your wife in there? more than once? Delete ALL entries you can find.

Now start writing an email to your wife. does the address appear in the suggestions when you start typing her address? If so there is still an entry in the address book. Once you have all entries gone Click reply on one of her emails and send her a message by clicking reply Did the odd looking formatting show up? Now write her an email and start typing in the address. Do you see the modification your referring to if you just start typing to mail to her?

Do you have the contact sidebar open when addressing your mail (F9). If not open it and address the mail by selecting your wifes address from the address book list and double click the list entry. Is what appears correct or does it contain this odd formatting?

Note the standard format of an email address in a message is like this From: Steven Marshall <steven@stevenmarshall.com.au> That can be broken down to the display name and the email address, the email address is always enclosed in the < > If the display name is decorated with formatting then things can go very wrong. Especially if the display name contains non text characters.

I'm still waiting for feedback information regarding the instructions to follow in my last post.

Does your wife use a phone or perhaps any 'Chat' address to send emails? Could that weird address be lurking in a 'Edit contact' window under 'Chat' tab ?

THANKS for those who are trying to help!

I've printed out all the troubleshooting instructions and hope to get time to work on this issue in a few hours.

I will certainly get back to you with the results.

"Does your wife use a phone or perhaps any 'Chat' address to send emails? Could that weird address be lurking in a 'Edit contact' window under 'Chat' tab ? "

Nope.

In response to Matt: I have twice deleted Barb's address from all address books and verified there's no auto-fill unless I select "Reply". What I see when I'm sending is formatted the way you showed in your example. The returned emails are formatted as follows:

<"bmr >> Barbara Redacted <bmredacted"@bellsouth.net>

Looking in the "Sent" folder, I can see several examples of this odd formatting, probably all the ones that didn't go through. The latest test went through fine and it shows only her name in that column.

As to Toad-Hall: I followed all the steps. She was in the Personal address book only. Using the Contacts sidebar worked fine.

Ratty sends regards!

re :As to Toad-Hall: I followed all the steps. She was in the Personal address book only. Using the Contacts sidebar worked fine.

This proves the contact and address in 'Personal Address Book' is good.

Could you check out the following:

• Wife entry in 'Personal Address Book' - double click to open Edit window. I do not know if you have something in 'Display', but suggest you keep it simple, so type : Barbara
• Select the checkbox 'Always prefer display name over message header'
• Click on OK

Close Address Book

You could also select to show display name if you prefer.

• Menu app icon > Options > Options > Display > 'Advanced' tab
• Select checkbox 'Show only display name for people in my address book'

Select email and click on 'Forward' This time, in 'TO' field, type: Bar (not bmr) and select 'Barbara <email addess>' from drop down - do not select any other version. So that you are searching on name and not email address.

Please report back on results.

I was waiting to see if the problem is still extant. This morning I found another returned message like the earlier ones. I'll try your idea and see what happens, but...

I noticed something interesting that I thought I'd pass along. There appear to be three versions of Barb's address. The one that I see when forwarding is

bmr >> Barbara M. Redacted M.Div. <bmredacted@bellsouth.net>

but what appears at the top of the failure notice is

<"bmr >> Barbara M. Redacted M.Div. <bmredacted"@bellsouth.net>

and lower down in the failure message, it appears as

"bmr >> Barbara M. Redacted M.Div. <bmredacted@bellsouth.net"
</pre>


But note that you are seeing extra stuff [<="" pre="">] and  later
[</bmredacted@bellsouth.net">] apparently added by the forum software to the 
final version; it also doesn't want to accept my preferred spacing between 
lines, which means a 30" message winds up taking five minutes to compose.