Contacts Module: Request for Information

[leknoppix]

Good evening everyone,

I have been using Nextcloud for a while now, and I recently enabled the Contacts module. However, I find its functionality a bit confusing, and I would like to share my experience.

In my desktop client Thunderbird, I have three distinct address books:

• Colleagues
• Company
• Personal

I created corresponding address books in my Nextcloud personal space (Colleagues, Company, Personal) and imported the appropriate contact entries. When I connect via CardDAV to Thunderbird, I can select the address books from my Nextcloud instance.

However, in the Nextcloud interface, all my contacts appear in a single “folder,” which makes navigation a bit cumbersome. I have to check each contact entry to see which address book it belongs to.

Is this normal behavior? I’m not sure if this is a bug on my end or if it’s how the system is intended to work. Is there a way to list the address books in Nextcloud without them being merged?

Thank you in advance for your help, and have a great evening!

[j-ed]

Yes, that’s the normal behavior in Nextcloud. As a workaround and to differenciate entries based on the addressbook, you can e.g. use the group field and add a group which matches your addressbook name.

[leknoppix]

Hello @j-ed, thank you for your response; I understand better now. I thought I had made a mistake during the installation! Your suggestion is nice, but I see that I have over 700 contacts imported from Thunderbird, and I don’t feel up to the task. Since there will be 70 of us using it, I feel like I’m heading for disaster! Thank you anyway. Have a great day!

[j-ed]

I would assume that you could set the group/category field in Thunderbird for multiple entries in one go, using the CardBook addin. This might be the fastest way to solve your issue.