kmail problems with kaddressbook - what is used for autocomplete, how to edit it

[Rafal-maj-it]

Where kmail stores it's addresses for auto completion?

This is very confusing.

Config option in kmail just shows "Resource" (in the button to configure autocompletion order), which does not match any name of the address books in kaddressbook.

It seems std.vcf is used from kabc .kde folder - but just sometimes... now adding more contacts with emails does not make kmail use them in autocompletion.

Also in kaddress book there are like 5 different formats of address books, they can have subfolders of various formats, can be remote or local, synchronized, etc etc... wtf? People usually just need A one address book. That works well with kmail. That kmail can write into, and that kmail can use for autocompletion. Neither of this 2 functions work in my installation. Problems first started after migration to luci with some akonadi db troubles (few bugs reported there got resolved) and since then kmail have trouble using address book.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. I have classified this bug as a bug in kdepim.

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport, either via the appropriate application's "Help -> Report a Problem" menu or using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Rafal-maj-it (rafal-maj-it)]

Work around / solution:
delete all address books in kaddressbook
stop akonadi - akonadictl stop
remove all std.vcf* from ~/.kde/share/apps/kabc etc
start akonadi - akonadictl start

open kaddressbook
create a new book - simple VCF file. Select file: ~/.kde/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf

now the addresses that you put there (in example in kaddressbook) will be in fact visible and auto-completable in kmail, finally.
also from kmail now you can click on the address and click Add To Address book, and it will in fact work.

Amazing, eh? All of the above was not working (first problems started with kmail auto-completing some email address that was not visible in kaddressbook somehow - so had to try to delete/recreate it).

Proposed ways to improve clarity here:
- write what exactly kaddressbook resources are used
- either make kmail cooperate with all resources other then the above std.vcf in default location - or if not possible for now - just make kmail always use std.vcf and remind user where the file is located / set kaddress book to always show this resource

[Rafal-maj-it (rafal-maj-it)]

Now again kmail reverted to old behaviour, emails from std address book are not auto-complet, and there is no option to import from kmail to address book... (list of Resources in kmail is empty)

[Rafal-maj-it (rafal-maj-it)]

And another update, restarting kmail and kaddressbook program few times seem to help. Also I fixed contacts that had empty "" as display name (dunno if that is important for the issue)

[Daniel Wrana (wrana-blauhaus)]

There ist a functionality which helps in some scenarios described by the people above. The adressbooks which are used in kmail are not set in kmail/kadressbook/akonadi like expected but in "Personal Information" in systemsettings. There you can set which contact-ressources are used generally and also in kmail for adress completion. There you can set single adress books or you can add the akonadi-ressource which adds all adressbooks registered in akonadi.

Now, all adresses are shown which are defined in kadressbook because kadressbook also shows all adressbooks registered in akonadi.

See: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=220608

Suggestion for Kubuntu default installation: As Akonadi is used by default in kadressbook which is for the normal user "the adressbook", the default setting for standard-contacts in "personal information" should also be the akonadi-ressource and not the old standard-adressbook

[Maarten Bezemer (veger)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running apport-collect 643248 and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Florian Brunner (fbrunnerreg)]

+1 same issue here with

It's very annoying that I cannot use the e-mail addresses in my address book!

Kubuntu 11.04
KDE 4.6.5
Kontact 4.4.10
KMail 1.13.6

[Diggory (diggory-hardy)]

Ditto, though I don't see any settings in Akonadi configuration ("Personal Information" section) which actually help here.