I have contacts with multiple email addresses. I want to assign non-Primary to specific Groups, ie, Billing different than Main (Primary).

Also, when using simple or Advanced Search, it doesn't find any other email address other than Primary for that contact.

Finally, using Full-Text or Search Builder, the former finds the Contact record but offers no additional functions while the latter finds the correct email address but will not allow it to be added to the group and defaults to the Primary tagged email address.


In CiviCRM you cannot assign email-adresses to groups but only contacts, including all their related information such as email-adresses.

Could you specify, what you want to do with the contacts in question (e.g. sending an email to a specific address, create a pdf-letter...)? Maybe there is another solution for your task at hand.

I think the non-primary email-addresses are not found by simple or advanced search due to performance reasons - there is an older threat here:


choose location type

  • For instance, Contact Bob has two different email addresses, one for regular mailings like our newsletters (Home), and a second for billing which he uses only for finances (Billing). I want to be able to place each email address in separate groups for different messaging purposes. – BruceW May 22 '15 at 0:18
  • When using the mailing (newsletter) function from 4.6 on, you can select the location type (e.g. billing, home...) that should be used (see screenshot). If you you want to use the "send email to contcats" function, I don't think there is an easy way to select the location type to send it to - CiviCRM will use the primary address. As outlined above, groups are only for contacts not for single email-addresses :( – Fabian May 26 '15 at 12:26
  • Sure, but that "Location Type" filter in the image is global to the group and too late in the workflow. I'm referring to the the creation of groups and specifying email addresses for the same,contact in different groups. I could see an enhancement in javascript next to each email address in a contact to assign it to a group(s). In another workflow, this could be made available at the time of adding contacts to a group. – BruceW Jun 1 '15 at 18:23

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