Address book adding incorrect last name automatically

There are older, unanswered questions about this, but still no solution.
How do I get addressbook to stop adding last names?
I have my own contact as "me" in the first name field. (I've also tried using only the last name field.) Every few days, it changes to "me me." Same goes for "dad dad." It's not like it's adding a last name (or a first name) based on an email address (ie, johndoe@gmail isn't becoming "john doe"). It's duplicating the first name (even when it's made up) into the last name field. It then changes my incorrect contact info in others' contact lists as "me me." Note that I've also tried adding a space in the last name field, but that doesn't work. I know that this is based on email addresses (via laptop, iphone, mobileme?) since it leaves "mom" alone (there is no email address associated with my mother).
Please don't tell me to just use the last names (that seems to be the "solution" on a lot of these posts) as I don't want my father listed as "dad doe."
Many thanks.

roam wrote:
from the address book menubar > Card, *reorder Last name before first*.
I didn't notice that setting before.
Just some moments before, I read in another thread about someone who puts all names of Chinese contacts in the last name field, because in Chinese the 'first' name comes last. I guess that this setting - which can be set for each contact seperately - is intended for these cases.

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How do I sort my address book by the last name, not the first name

AS I created my address book the names were added randomly to the address book. When I print out the address book the names come up with first name, Last name (all in random order alphabetically). I would like them to come up with Last name, first name, email address in alphabetic order by the Last Name. How do I get them sorted corretly??

Enable the menu in the Address Book. Then look at the options under View and Sort By.
More here on sorting: http://www.ramsden.org.uk/8_How_to_sort.html
And about menus here: http://chrisramsden.vfast.co.uk/13_Menus_in_Thunderbird.html

Problems with envelope-printing in Address Book: First and Last names

New entries I make in Address Book are printing incorrectly, with Last name then First name. Most of my older entries print correctly as First name then Last name (though oddly I have a small batch of entries I imported ages ago which have always exhibited the same transposition problem).
I have prefs set to display entries by Last name. Problem entries WILL print correctly if I change this to 'display by First name'. (older entries print correctly regardless of 'display by..' pref).
I'm having the same problem if I create a new account, which made me suspect the app was corrupted, but not helped by deleting app and re-installing from Tiger DVD then running combo updater.

Thank you for the suggestion.
However, it doesn't make sense for the LIST display-order to swap the first-and-last names on an ENVELOPE. Secondly, most of my entries DO print correctly: it's only NEW entries that transpose the first and last names.

Address book. First & last names order problem

Hi all, I'm having an issue with address book names not appearing in the right order, or more to the point first and last names not appearing in the right order - in fact it's exactly the same as:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7471811#7471811
However that solution doesn't work.
Essentially, when I go into address book / prefs and click sort by firstname/lastname - the list updates, but when I click 'before last name' / 'following last name' nothing happens at all. The list is ordered by first name - as I want it, but I'm still getting the surname first.
This has transferred over to my Touch as well so it's very frustrating! any ideas?
thanks very much for your time

Hi
You want the first name first.
Investigate this.
Close Address Book
Open the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist with Property List editor which comes with XCode.
Look for the entry
*ABNameDisplay Number 1*
and change the 1 to 0 (zero)
and save. This sets the name order to 'Before last name'
If you don't have Xcode it might be on your Install DVD.

Address Book creating thousands "No Name" cards

Thought I had a MobileMe syncing problem, but have now narrowed it down to Address Book creating hundreds and thousands of Contact cards for "No Name" all by itself. I go in and delete them and they reappear seconds later. It's a loop: delete them, Empty trash, they come back.
Just installed Aperture 3 last night. Could this be the problem?
HELP!

scalz wrote:
Thanks! Unfortunately, throwing away the plist file has not helped. I delete the extra thousands of "No Name" cards in Address Book and they come right back. I have MobileMe syncing turned off right now, so it is out of the picture. But, did a reset of the sync data last night in during the middle of all of this, and that still did not help.
quit address book.
reset your sync folder.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1627
then delete the file homedirectory/library/application support/address book/AddressBook-v22.abcddb. then start Address Book and see how it works now.
To repeat: deleted all "Address Book" plist files, launched Address Book, deleted 4000 "No Name" cards, waited a few moments, Quit and re-launched Address Book, waited a few moments, 4,000 + "No Name" cards add themselves back into Address Book.
YIKES!

Does Address book has a Last Modified Date field?

Hi
Please can you let me know if Address book has a Last Modified Date field? I'd like to know what date I have last modified my address book records. I checked Preferences but not able to find it there.
Thank you.

Sorry, but there is no such field in Address Book. If you select an individual entry in Address Book, you will see to the lower-right an "Updated" field with the date that entry was last updated. This is not true for all entries, but nearly all. There seems to be a point after which you've entered text in the Note field that the "Updated" field will no longer appear when you select an entry, but it's not documented.

Mail and Address Book adding second name to contacts!?

Each time I recieve an email from, for example, my father, Mail and Address Book change his name to 'Dad Bramhall'. I specifically change it to 'Dad but whenever I sync. to my iPhone the address book entry changes to Dad Bramhall.
This is so frustrating so please does anyone know how to stop it adding/changing a name? Thanks.

I have tried editing his name on both my Mac and iPhone address book but it just changes to Dad Bramhall again. He has is name listed as Mark Bramhall and how do I change email preferences? Thanks.

Strange Address Book problem where 1st name is duplicated into last name

Hello
Here's the problem. I use Address Book and I have several entries where two people are listed together; for example, I have "John and Jane." I put "John and Jane" under First Name and leave Last Name blank. However, every few weeks, I get a repetition of the second of the first names into the last names. Thus it reads under first name: "John and Jane" and under Last Name: "Jane." I never typed "Jane" under the Last Name, yet it pops up (and it happens quite often for a lot of the names). I delete the "Last Name," it's fine for a few weeks, then it happens again, and I can't figure out why. I tried to backup the Address Book after fixing the problem, delete what's in the Address Book folder in "Application Support," and then import what I'd backed up; yet the problem persists. Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you.

This is one of those little annoyances that we have to learn to live with (unless Apple decides, at some time at their own convenience to fix it). You could try reminding them at OS X Feedback. Address Book is just not happy with contact cards where there is a first name but no last name. I don't know what happens if you try putting John and Jane in the last name field and leaving the first name blank.
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AK

Snow Leopard's Address Book now Requires Full Name to find a Contact

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In Snow Leopard, Address Book can no longer search with one letter the way it did before; it uses a 'Spotlight' type of search where the user must type the full name in order to get an exact match. This type of searching is useful for finding documents on the Mac or searching the Internet, but is totally inefficient for finding contacts in Address Book.
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HT2486 I'm entering in my address book I enter the names etc but when I go to Print labels it only prints the address not the name??

I am entering in my address book, enter whole name address etc but when I go to print a label only the address get printed no name

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I realise that you can use groups to do this but it seems somewhat pointless to have one group per blog sometimes with only one contact in it and anyway why bother having the company info in the first place.
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Hello,
Lately I have been noticing a very strange behavior in Address Book/iChat/Mail (they all reflect the problem once it happens).
I have my first name as "XYZ" (for example), and my last name is left blank. Then, out of nowhere, it fills in the first letter of my last name, and correctly too!
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Could it be autofill from Safari? Or something in Mail?
This also then appears in my iChat handle (which is clearly linked to the Address Book, because when I go into the Address Book and delete this letter from the last name field it disappears from iChat instantly as well).
Anybody?

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Address Book - Unwanted individual's name under Company Name

Individuals names automatically insert under the Company names at the top of contact pages.
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I delete them regularly but they keep appearing.
They are particularly frustrating as they overwrite names being typed into Mail.

Try pearLabelizer V0.6
http://www.pearworks.com/pages/software.html
You can drag address book cards to any label on the sheet. This is great for printing on a label page that you didn't use all the way.
In the preferences you can set any combo of info from the address card you want. You can save any number of theses combos.
MacPro 3GHz Dual Xeon/MacBook Pro 2.16 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

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http://www.avery.com/avery/en_us/Templates-%26-Software/Avery-DesignPro-for-Mac. htm?N=0&refchannel=c042fd03ab30a110VgnVCM1000002118140aRCRD
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-McCArch
(also posted this in the other thread where you asked a similar question)

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Is there way to color code the names so you know which groups they belong to?
I.e. I want to create bunch of groups and put names in them but color these names so that when I look at the library I will now which group they belong to.
thanks in advance

Rohit,
no, this is not possible (and probably wouldn't be even feasible - since a contact can be member of more than one group, color-coding would be a little difficult)
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Andreas

Address book adding incorrect last name automatically

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