MacExcellence

Changing “Copy Address” behavior in Snow Leopard’s Mail.app

Sat, December 05, 2009

Mac OS 10.6 brought a slight change to the way that Email addresses are copied to the clipboard when Control/Right-clicking on an email address in Mail.app. In Leopard, OS 10.5, the email address was copied cleanly, as in

In Snow Leopard, OS 10.6, the sender’s full name is prefixed to a bracketed email address, so instead you wind up with “Your Name <yourname@yourdomain.com>”

If the latter is what you desire, then you will be happy with this new behavior. Oftentimes, however, you will only want the email address, a la the old Leopard behavior. The way to achieve the old-style “Copy Address” behavior is to:

1. Quit Mail (if running),
2. Open up the Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)
3. Paste the following command:
   
   

   defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool NO

Hit ‘Enter’ and the new defaults will be written to Mail’s preferences.

Voila! Back to the old ‘Copy Address.’ Enjoy.