Large contact list maintenance support function
I have a fairly large personal contact file (700+) that is a pain to maintain and for which there are no good tools. There are two issues.
(1) I've been a YAHOO mail user since dinosaurs roamed the earth and although I occasionally purge contacts, I still end up with >1 address for many people as they change email addresses.
(2) There are also a few addresses that no longer work for contacts that I may not have another address for, so undeliverable. Not as big a problem as (1), but still an issue.
A solution.
A single solution via a (new Yahoo function) that would generally work for both would process as follows:
Access the INBOX, SENT mailboxes extracting one record for each email address (multiples per email likely), received/sent date. Match email address extracted with email addresses in contact list, selecting those that match (one record with the MOST RECENT rec/sent date for each email address in my contacts). Produce a spreadsheet (like) screen with columns: [email address], [last date active], [delete?], [contact attributes - name..] sorted by any user selected column(s).
First purge cycle: (User would) Sort the 'spreadsheet' by contact name, then last active address (high to low). Should be able to purge (select 'delete' and apply as a batch or individually) quite a few that way even though contact name is of course not consistent.
Second purge cycle (User would) Sort by email address then last date active (high to low). This would work since many people (you clearly excepted!) use the same email prefix (I have fred.. @...., used to have svescapekey@....), then email address (alpha) or contact attributes (user option).
A simpler solution that would put more responsibility with the user, but be easier for Yahoo would be to add email date (doesnt have to be last) to the contact list export and put the burden on the user to make the CSV file into an Excel spreadsheet, sort by inverse date, purge all but the most recent, go thru the process described above, create a CSV file again and then delete and import the modified file. Only a pretty sophisticated user would be up to that.