2

When I receive emails at an address that I also send emails with (via SMTP), Thunderbird will show the name as "Me". Even though I do not have that email in my contact book.

This is a problem when you forward emails to yourself, and require the name to know the email address of who is contacting you.

Screenshot

This is an incoming email, I forwarded to myself. Thunderbird replaces the sender's name with "Me".

Screenshot of an email interface from Thunderbird. The "From" and "To" fields both display "Me chris@hayes.software" with small icons next to each email address.

Context

I send emails with AWS SES via SMTP; however, to receive emails, I must forward emails to another account. AWS SES only allows you to forward emails from accounts that you own. So, this requires me to forward emails from myself to another email I own (not represented), and put the sender's name and email BOTH in the name field.

Annoyingly, Thunderbird always shows this address as "Me" regardless of whether I have my email in my address book as a contact. Thunderbird does this because of your existing SMTP configuration.

Chris Hayes
  • 493
  • 4
  • 9

2 Answers2

2

Solution 1

Save your email in your address book. Set a display name, and check the box which says "Prefer display name over message header":

Thunderbird Address Book

This will display as First Last and will omit the email address.

Solution 2

If for some reason, you need to have the email address displayed, instead of the above, do the following:

  • Tools -> Account Settings
  • Make sure the Field Your Name is not empty
  • Next, click on Manage Identities ... then on Add...
  • Fill out the fields of Your Name (with something else in respect to your primary Identity) and of Email address

This will set the email header for the sender as Your Name <email@address> according to the identity you choose when sending the email, and the Me should disappear.

1NN
  • 10,044
0

Turns out, there is a configuration that fixes this problem.

mail.showCondensedAddresses should be changed to false. This disables Thunderbird automatically replacing the sender's name with "Me".

That option has the side effect of showing your contacts as "Name " instead of just "Name".

Screenshots

Before:

Screenshot of an email interface from Thunderbird. The "From" and "To" fields both display "Me chris@hayes.software" with small icons next to each email address.

After:

Screenshot of an email interface showing the "From" and "To" fields. The "From" field displays "NAME at EMAIL_ADDRESS@gmail.com chris@hayes.software" with a small icon next to the email address. The "NAME" and "EMAIL_ADDRESS" text are superimposed on blurred text for privacy. The "To" field displays "chris@hayes.software" with a similar icon next to it.

Note: Original sender's email address is blurred. My email forwarding automatically adds "at EMAIL_ADDRESS" to the end of the sender's name, this is an unusual setup.

Steps to update this config

  1. Access Config Editor:

    1. Click on the menu button (three horizontal lines) in the top right corner.
    2. Select Settings.
    3. Click on the General tab.
    4. Click the Config Editor... button.

  2. Bypass Warning:

    • If prompted with a warning message, click I accept the risk! to proceed.

  3. Search for the Configuration:

    • In the search bar at the top, type mail.showCondensedAddresses

  4. Modify the Configuration:

    1. Locate the mail.showCondensedAddresses entry in the list.
    2. Double-click on it to change its value from true to false.
Chris Hayes
  • 493
  • 4
  • 9