Are Address Book nicknames used by Mail.app?

[Doctor Q]

When I address e-mail in Mail.app, I'd prefer to type initials like "spj" to address a message to my good buddy Steve Jobs, "joe" for my friend Joseph, or other nicknames for the others I e-mail regularly, rather than having to type a prefix of their name to use the auto-expand feature. I know a lot of Steves so typing "Steve" isn't efficient, and I think of Joe as Joe, even though he likes Joseph used with his e-mail address.

But the auto-expansion feature in Mail.app doesn't seem to work using the "nickname" field (or Notes or other fields that I have filled in) in Address Book.

This seems like such an obvious feature. Am I missing something? I have the "Automatically complete addresses" option on, but I don't have an LDAP server, just my little old Address Book full of names.

 

[PlaceofDis]

lets hope this gets added with Tiger, along with nicknames being used in iChat

its a pain, and i totally agree its an obvious feature that has been overlooked

 

[Applespider]

I seem to be on a thread resurrection spree today but I was sitting earlier becoming more and more irritated by this still not working in Tiger. The nickname field is entirely pointless still... unless anyone knows of any clever third party apps that can make use of it?

 

[Doctor Q]

There aren't many features that make me long for the days of Netscape, but using nicknames in Netscape Messenger 5 years ago was definitely more convenient than Mail.app's lookahead system today.