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> “John Smith” <john@example.com> Why would email clients copy a string like this? In my entire history of email copying and pasting, I don't think I've ever w

> “John Smith” <john@example.com> Why would email clients copy a string like this? In my entire history of email copying and pasting, I don't think I've ever wanted that text.

philfreo 13y ago
Well it's the standard format for displaying both the user's name & email address together (and part of the SMTP spec). But yeah - typically you just want the real address part. In Gmail at least you can get what you want with some careful highlighting - but Apple Mail doesn't let you copy that portion at all. Hence this feature :)
- deweerdt 13y ago
  I'm going to go ahead and be pedantic: that format is not part of the SMTP spec. It's part of the Internet Message Format RFC (5322 in its latest incarnation), which describes what's in the body of the email. The SMTP spec (RFC 5321) which describes what goes on the wire between an SMTP client and an SMTP server uses addresses in a '<to@example.com>' format.
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    Curse you off-by-one errors!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
joeblossom 13y ago
When you copy from outlook, it copies that unless you first double click on the contact then select just the email address.
timjahn 13y ago
This is standard behavior for Outlook.
jeffclark 13y ago
Me neither. OS X Mail has a hidden option that you can enable, so that Mail copies just the email address. Copy this into your Terminal and restart Mail: defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool false
- jkubicek 13y ago
  That works perfectly. Thanks!
- adrr 13y ago
  This is most useful thing i've learned all week. Thanks.
- pqdbr 13y ago
  Can't thank you enough for this. Can't blame Apple enough for making this a hidden default one has to use the terminal to enable. WHY ?
oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
If only copy+paste worked with structured data, rather than just plain text, we'd have this behaviour everywhere. Sure, it's not a trivial problem, but there must be something possible along these lines.
- FuzzyDunlop 13y ago
  Possibly tangential, but you can copy and paste and get different results based on context (eg. copy image file, paste into HTML doc, get image tag; paste into terminal, get path; paste into mail client, get attachment; paste into image editor, get the image itself). It definitely works in OSX, but IIRC it's supported in Windows too. I last tried this around 18 months ago, in a Firefox extension. Was a bit fiddly but I could do what I wanted.
  - frenchy 13y ago
    It works on virtually all desktop systems (Linux, OSX, Windows) and has for a good long time, it's just a matter of whether or not the application has implemented support for it. You're more limited in what you can do in a web application though.
positr0n 13y ago
Lotus Notes :(
twistedpair 13y ago
Newsworthy? So they decided to copy how Gmail's contacts form has been working for the last 4 years? Brainwave!
mseebach 13y ago
In GMail it's very easy to get a string like that, and it has the added benefit of giving you name and address together in a single copy-paste.

> “John Smith” <john@example.com> Why would email clients copy a string like this? In my entire history of email copying and pasting, I don't think I've ever wanted that text.

philfreo 13y ago

Well it's the standard format for displaying both the user's name & email address together (and part of the SMTP spec). But yeah - typically you just want the real address part. In Gmail at least you can get what you want with some careful highlighting - but Apple Mail doesn't let you copy that portion at all. Hence this feature :)

deweerdt 13y ago
I'm going to go ahead and be pedantic: that format is not part of the SMTP spec. It's part of the Internet Message Format RFC (5322 in its latest incarnation), which describes what's in the body of the email. The SMTP spec (RFC 5321) which describes what goes on the wire between an SMTP client and an SMTP server uses addresses in a '<to@example.com>' format.
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  Curse you off-by-one errors!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

joeblossom 13y ago

When you copy from outlook, it copies that unless you first double click on the contact then select just the email address.

timjahn 13y ago

This is standard behavior for Outlook.

jeffclark 13y ago

Me neither. OS X Mail has a hidden option that you can enable, so that Mail copies just the email address. Copy this into your Terminal and restart Mail: defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool false

jkubicek 13y ago
That works perfectly. Thanks!
adrr 13y ago
This is most useful thing i've learned all week. Thanks.
pqdbr 13y ago
Can't thank you enough for this. Can't blame Apple enough for making this a hidden default one has to use the terminal to enable. WHY ?

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago

If only copy+paste worked with structured data, rather than just plain text, we'd have this behaviour everywhere. Sure, it's not a trivial problem, but there must be something possible along these lines.

FuzzyDunlop 13y ago
Possibly tangential, but you can copy and paste and get different results based on context (eg. copy image file, paste into HTML doc, get image tag; paste into terminal, get path; paste into mail client, get attachment; paste into image editor, get the image itself). It definitely works in OSX, but IIRC it's supported in Windows too. I last tried this around 18 months ago, in a Firefox extension. Was a bit fiddly but I could do what I wanted.
- frenchy 13y ago
  It works on virtually all desktop systems (Linux, OSX, Windows) and has for a good long time, it's just a matter of whether or not the application has implemented support for it. You're more limited in what you can do in a web application though.

positr0n 13y ago

Lotus Notes :(

twistedpair 13y ago

Newsworthy? So they decided to copy how Gmail's contacts form has been working for the last 4 years? Brainwave!

mseebach 13y ago

In GMail it's very easy to get a string like that, and it has the added benefit of giving you name and address together in a single copy-paste.