Stalling this. Looking at Kevin's description it seems like a lot of 
work for a small change. My suggestion would be to integrate a small 
search screen into the list display pages, for adding contacts from 
there. But unless a patch shows up I don't see myself doing this 
anytime soon.

But the one big difference is that with the current interface, you 
need to add each entry to the contact list before you can find the 
next one.  What I'm looking for is the ability to do a lot of arbitary 
searches and build up a list of just the entries I want, and then when 
I'm doing searching, add them all to a contact list.



For instance, if I want to add five unique entries to a contact list, 
I currently have to:



Find Entry 1, add to contact list

Find Entry 2, add to contact list

Find Entry 3, add to contact list

Find Entry 4, add to contact list

Find Entry 5, add to contact list



What I would like to be able to do is:

Find Entry 1, add to right hand side of wizard

Find Entry 2, add to right hand side of wizard

Find Entry 3, add to right hand side of wizard

Find Entry 4, add to right hand side of wizard

Find Entry 5, add to right hand side of wizard

Add all right hand side of wizard entries to a single contact list.



Our users would find such an interface, though very similar in concept 
to the existing interface, much more simpler and focused to use.   
They're used to search, double-click to move, save, not search, 
toggle, save, search toggle, save.

But isn't that possible right now exactly? It doesn't look like the 
mini address book, but you search for contacts, add them to another 
address book or a contact list with the drop down, search for more 
contacts etc.

While a "wizard" might have a more focused interface, it would 
actually reproduce already existing features/UI.

Not really.  2011 covers the cases where you can specify some arbitary 
criteria, save those search criteria and live with the resuts (example 
of by title, location, etc.).  This request would handle the random 
groupings that people come up with.  With the cached search results 
gone (which I think is a good move as it led to some user confusion), 
building contact lists became harder because its a find and add for 
each entry.  This request would provide a means to make that simpler, 
by collecting all search results as a user searches through the 
address books available to them (akin to the Address Book mini-window 
in IMP).

Wouldn't this be covered by request 2011?

With the cached search results gone, it would be helpful to have an 
alternate mechanism to build a list of contacts to add to an address 
book.  My thoughts are to use a "wizard" approach (as much as I hate 
that term), that essentially functions like the Address Book 
minisearch in the IMP compose screen.  You're presented with a search 
screen, with sources in a menu, you find the users you want, add them 
to the right side, then select which contact list to add them to (or 
create a new one if you want).  Idea probably needs refined, but for 
large personal contact lists, finding users one by one and having to 
click Add each time will be met with some resistance I think.