Not So Smart Contacts

25 Feb 2024 20:17:25

Rick Churchill

I am having problems with Smart Contacts. I use the company line directly under the name fields to add societies such as WAMUG/VINE/GP where I wish to send out bulk emails. So for example I make a Smart Contact list GP CHALLENGE with "Companies > contains > GP" for my F1 Fantasy league.

Where there are contacts that have more than one email address I seem to get multiple entries when I put in GP CHALLENGE in my email To: line.

I also get old players that in some cases have died (which is very awkward if I don't spot them). These are addresses no longer in my Contacts and which have been removed from Previous Recipients.

This is very odd and am unable to narrow down the instances

Re: Not So Smart Contacts

27 Feb 2024 22:55:59

Tony Still

The multiple entries in the email To: line just sounds like that's the way it works with Mail: on another day someone might complain that some addresses get omitted.

The old entries is more of a mystery. As a wild guess, have you at some point had Contacts working locally and later moved to keeping its data on iCloud? I wonder if there could be an extra, old copy of your Contacts (that you can't see) which the smart list is also scanning.

I *think* it's safe to switch Contacts to work locally (ie not on iCloud) so you could then inspect a copy of what should be a snapshot from iCloud but might have some extras. Don't edit anything except delete unwanted entries, then turn on iCloud again and you should resync safely. Bit of a long-shot I'm afraid.