Unable to add a Buddy

Asked by Mark

I'm running Pidgin 2.6.1 on Ubuntu 9.04. When I try to add a buddy I click Buddies -> Add a Buddy and get the "Add Buddy" pop up. I select "New Person" and get another pop up. I specify the email address, the first and last name. I get a weird view where I'm to select which group to put them in, but I click on the arrows and I can select the group to add them to. When I ok, I get a "Unable to Add" pop up that says "Unable to add the buddy (null) because the username is invalid. Usernames must be a valid email address." The user name is a valide @hotmail.com id, so I'm not sure what's going on....

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#1

Can you add other people as buddies, pointing to an issue with just one user or is it all?

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Mark (mswal2846) said :
#2

I've tried with two and both have the same problem. The first time this happened, I went into aMSN and added them, then when I started Pidgin, it recognized that I had added them and it put up an error but removed the pending name. But until I did that, the person stayed there pended, even when restarting Pidgin.

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arochester (arochester) said :
#3

Which "account" are you trying to install them in. I am in MSN (amongs others) but my username is ****@yahoo.com, not **** or ****@hotmail.

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Mark (mswal2846) said :
#4

I'm not sure I'm understanding this question. Actually, when I went to add the buddy, I was presented with a list of groups in which to add them. I wasn't offered the account type that buddy is with (like MSN). And infact, one of the buddies is an MSN account and the other is an Office Communicator account.

And, all of a sudden, the buddy I successfully added under aMSN has popped back up on the Pidgin Buddy pop up .... how can I, at least, delete them from this pop up?

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#5

ok try this:

close all pidgins

run:

mv ~/.purple ~/.purple_old

rerun pidgin, you will need to reconfigure accounts but you should be able to try and add the friend to the new profile, the old profile is still available as we renamed it. If the new profile works you have 2 options

1. Rename the folder back and try work out whats going on (Hard)
2. Continue with the fresh profile and rebuild up (Easy)

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Mark (mswal2846) said :
#6

Ok, so I started over basically. I think one of the plugins was causing my problem as the original "add a buddy" pop up came up with the reset Pidgin. At any rate, I'm good again!

Thank you for your help!

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#7

np

You can now delete ~/.purple_old if it is no longer required

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Robert Ramsay (robert-alan-ramsay) said :
#8

I had the same problem, I have reason to suspect that the Evolution Integration plugin is at fault. With it enabled, the add buddy dialog is different, and I get "(null) buddy name invalid" error. After I disabled the plugin, I could add buddies again without any errors.

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tamalet (tamalet) said :
#9

This seems to be solved upstream in Pidgin 2.7.11
http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/13298