Only display email in `To` field when sending a Gmail message

Question

I often name people in my Gmail account's contact with the "funny" name(s) that remind me of who they are like Smith from Company A, Smith Funny, Smith big head, etc.

When sending message in Gmail, in To field, I just want to put the recipients' emails only; NOT their emails preceeded by my "funny names". The reason is that I don't want people know I call them like that ^_^

How can I make Gmail to put email only instead of the full format as Full Contact Name <their@email.com>?

Currently I have to manually edit the To field to remove the preceding names. It would be very lovely for me if Gmail setting have a checkbox that says To field without names

Yosi Mor · Answer

I am assuming that you are sending the mail via Gmail's standard web interface, and that your "funny name" for the recipient is defined in your corresponding Gmail (or Google) Contacts entry for that person.

I think that the only solution is to manually edit the recipient details in the Compose window, before hitting Send.

For example, if you start typing "Smith" inside "To" (or "Cc" / "Bcc"), the auto-complete mechanism will show you the available options -- say:

 - "Smith from Company A" <[email protected]>
 - "Smith Funny" <[email protected]>
 - "Smith big head" <[email protected]>

And let's say that you choose the third one, "Smith big head" .

You would need to manually edit the "Smith big head" part and change it to something that will not embarrass you, and only then hit the Send button.

Big-headed Smith will never know about your secret label, but your entry for him in Contacts will remain unchanged — ready for next time.

This technique should generally be possible also when sending via an alternative email client, such as Mozilla Thunderbird — but you would need to explicitly test this with each such client beforehand.

Only display email in `To` field when sending a Gmail message

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