In Mail.app, how can I set a recipient's default email address?

Question

When typing a recipient's name in the "To:" field, Mail.app will bring up an autocomplete menu showing all email addresses for that recipient (e.g., Home and Work). If I don't pay attention and just hit Enter or Tab to autocomplete the recipients name, Mail.app picks the first address.

Is there a way to choose the default email address that Mail.app selects for the autocomplete of a recipient? I'm not sure if this settings resides in Mail.app or the Address Book.

Example

In the example below, there are two email addresses for the recipient. Mail.app defaults to the Home email, whereas I'd prefer it to default to the Work email for this contact.

Answer 1

You can if you have the contact in a group in Address Book. Select the group, then go to Edit > Edit Distribution List... You can select the contact's default email address (the default one is marked in bold). As far as I know, this only sets the default address when emailing that group, though. I don't know of a way to set a default address for a "normal" contact. (After trying to figure out a way off and on for several years, I'm inclined to say it isn't possible, but hopefully someone will prove me wrong.)

Answer 2

Remove the email address you don't want to be the default from the 'Previous Recipients' list in Mail.app:

Mail -> Window -> Previous Recipients -> Search for Name

This will make the default (and much faster) first address the one in the Previous List and any others in the address book will be further down the auto-complete list.

Answer 3

What order are the addresses in in Address Book? If you put the work address first there, it might be on top in the Mail list and be the default selection.