Adding an email address

Let's say a friend sends you an email from her new address and asks you to update your address book. No problem, you try to add the email address in your Yahoo! email account. Sometimes you are faced with a problem. You get a message in two parts that says the following:

There was a problem: Not all the entries were added. Please correct the errors below: The entry already exists:

The problem is that the nickname that you've given has already been used for the old email address. Not a problem, you can delete the old address and hence nickname, right? Not so fast my friend, as a certain ESPN coach would say. To delete the old address, you have to go back to the address book, which means that you "lose" the new email address. So, you have to copy the email address to the clipboard (or go back to the original email again) and then create a new entry. Cumbersome. There is a simpler solution--use another nickname. But, the original problem still remains--the old email address is still there and needs to be deleted. Plus, you're likely to use the original nickname. Let's say that the email client (or application) allows you to use the same nickname for two different addresses. No, no, the nickname must be unique, I can hear some developers saying. Not really. Fastmail, an email service I really like, allows you to use the same nickname and they don't have problems. Gmail doesn't even ask you about storing addresses. So, it can be done. Why Yahoo! doesn't do it, I don't know--maybe because nobody's said anything about this. Having said all of this, I like using Yahoo! email. I just wish that they'd make some things simpler.