Address book is empty when composing new email

I also see this. A workaround is to select an addressbook (UbuntuOne does not work because of bug #816479) and then type something into the search field.

As far as I can tell (but before asking upstream), it seems to me like this is probably expected behavior, since the list could be quite large. As soon as you start typing in something, results will start displaying.

<cyphermox> is it normal for the addressbook chooser dialog (when you click the To: button in a new message) to start with no results displayed in the left pane, no matter what address book is chosen (as soon as I type something in, it starts listing results though). This is with evo 3.1.92
<mbarnes> cyphermox: yes
<cyphermox> ok, that's what I thought
<cyphermox> avoiding to list tons of entries and clobber the network?
<mbarnes> right. not fun to scroll through hundreds of contacts in a tiny little window

Closing the bug as Invalid (it's expected behavior).

Reopening this bug as upstream actually fixed it...

From upstream bug:

Created commit 7f26baf in eds master (3.3.1+)
Created commit ee4574f in eds gnome-3-2 (3.2.2+)

really an e-d-s bug, we can fit that in to the next SRU for e-d-s in Oneiric I guess.

This bug was fixed in the package evolution-data-server - 3.2.2-0ubuntu1

---------------
evolution-data-server (3.2.2-0ubuntu1) precise; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
    - POP3: Use a safer default value for "delete-after-days"
      (LP: #877534, #879305)
    - Empty Contacts list when pressing "To:" in composer (LP: #846550)
 -- Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre <email address hidden> Wed, 16 Nov 2011 08:47:35 -0500

Hello Marc, or anyone else affected,

Accepted evolution-data-server into oneiric-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

I am running the oneiric-proposed package right now. Contacts list is appearing fine, with no apparent regressions.

This bug was fixed in the package evolution-data-server - 3.2.2-0ubuntu1~oneiric

---------------
evolution-data-server (3.2.2-0ubuntu1~oneiric) oneiric-proposed; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
    - POP3: Use a safer default value for "delete-after-days"
      (LP: #877534, #879305)
    - Empty Contacts list when pressing "To:" in composer (LP: #846550)
 -- Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre <email address hidden> Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:34:52 -0500

I just linked a question which concerns the same bug, and I'm also experiencing it with evolution 3.6.0-0ubuntu3. So I would like to reopen, for Quantal, but it's not clear to me if I'm missing the permissions to do so (or I'm just plain stupid).

Please forget my last comment- I just saw bug #1072442, which concerns the new issue.