Huckleberry wrote:

When you add a new contact there is a place for the email address and
a field called "Display As". When you look at your "inbox", the
"from" field does not show the email address the message is from, it
shows the "Display As" (which I called Alias).

Actually, when you receive a message, it doesn't show what _you_ have as the
"Display As" for the person, it shows the contents of the From or Sender
header the user's mail client included. For example, the From header might
be

From: "Joe Smith and Company"

and you'll see "Joe Smiths and Company" in the from line of your message.
In any event, what you see if controlled by the sender's client, not
anything you have in your Contacts.

However, as I noted,
the same email address can have many different "Display As" names for
the same email address. This is extremely annoying.

Nonetheless, it's up to the sender.

I have cases
where there are 4 different "Display As" names for a single email
address. If I want to find all items "from" that particular email
address, I have to remember or find all 4 "Display As" names. That
seems downright stupid (I hope you will excuse my expressed
annoyance). As far as I can tell, I can't change that column (the
from column) to be sorted just on the email address and I can't change
the "Display As" names so that a given email address only has one
name.

I think I agree that it would be nice to be able to have Outlook display the
actual mail address in the From header. Note, however, that there doesn't
even have to be ANYTHING in the From header. That header doesn't even have
to be included in the message. It might be impossible for Outlook (or any
mail client, for that matter) to show you the mail address, since it may not
be included.

In addition, on emails I receive from China, they often have a
"Display As" that is not any known character and displays as nonsense.

Nonsense? Probably not. It probably was Chinese, but since you and the
sender used difference character set encodings you don't see what was sent.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]