[Evolution] Problems Splitting a Contact

[Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh pacbell net>]

I used to have a single contact for Bob and Wendy Doe, but now need two contacts, since they have different email addresses.  (Is this really necessary?  Comments welcome.)  I thought I'd duplicate the contact for "Bob & Wendy Doe); but this doesn't seem to be possible; file systems allow making copies of files to other files with similar names like say

$ cp -a foo foo.bk

but evolution allows nothing like this with contacts.

So I thought I'd copy the contact for Bob&Wendy from my Personal contact list into another list called KeyNames, then edit the two copies so that the one in Personal is for Bob Doe and the one in KeyNames is for Wendy Doe; then copy the one in KeyNames (for Wendy Doe)  back to Personal.  This fails; I get a message warning of a UID conflict.  Well, thought I, I'll export the contact for Wendy Doe from KeyNames as a vcard and import this back into Personal.  This also fails for the same reason, but silently; if I edit the vcard to remove the line:

UID:pas-id-419866BF000000A3

everything works.

I can't be the only person who has needed to do this kind of thing.

Questions:  

• Would it be practical to allow contacts to be duplicated within the same list?
• What is the function of the UID in a vcard?  Is it necessary?  Desirable?

-- 

Sincerely Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh pacbell net>

	Those who would give up essential liberty to 
	purchase a little temporary safety deserve 
	neither liberty nor safety.
	-- Benjamin Franklin