Address Book is adding last name. I need it to stop. Help?

I am getting contacts in my address book saying stuff like "Joe Smith Smith" I don't utilize last names for personal preference reasons but it seems that the app is adding them anyway. Please help me find a way to stop them.

Found this and it seems to be working for me on OS X 10.8.3...
Junto26
Re: Address Book keeps changing the name of my contact Dec 14, 2011 9:11 AM (in response to fshelleyiv)
Hopefully you fixed it before now. But if not, I had the same exact problem and I found a fix on MacRumors:
Steps:
1. Quit Mail
2. Open Finder and go to Library ==> Application Support ==> AddressBook
3. Remove the file MailRecents-v4.abcdmr
4. Open Mail, the file will be created again but now the sync issues should be resolved
This will stop that last name from re-adding itself even after you manually delete it.

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

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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
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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.
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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.
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*ABNameDisplay Number 1*
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If you don't have Xcode it might be on your Install DVD.

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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.

Mail automatically adding last name to Contact in Address Book

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It's DEFINITELY a bug! My wife's name is "Jac" and every time I correct the address book to be "Jac" with no surname (or no Christian name and "Jac" as the surname) with in a day or so her contact is listed as "Jac Jac."
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I just checked and she was in my previous recipients listed as Jac Jac, so perhaps if I remove that entry from the previous recipients of all my machines this might stop. But it must have started somewhere!

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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.
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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.

Address Book has added an extra day to birthday entries

Does anyone have a solution to this? I have seen a few entries on the address book automatically adding an extra day (or two) to birthday entries in the Address Book. Thanks

hmm, just to completely eliminate syncing problem turn off syncing on that computer and reset the sync folder. make sure AB is not running at the time.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1627
then delete the AB database file again, start AB and and see if it works. also, do the dates display correctly in finder when you view modified and created times for files?

I have an iphone 4S with broken wifi (!) and I need to sync my contacts before I set up my new iphone 6. I thought contacts synced automatically with itunes but seems not. I've found my Apple address book but contacts are outdated. What to do? Help!

I have an iphone 4S with broken wif i :-( and I need to sync my contacts before I set up my new iphone 6. I thought contacts synced automatically with itunes but seems not. I've found my Apple address book but contacts are outdated. What to do? Help!

If your Bluetooth is working, you may be able to tether your phone to another device, and backup that way. Either via iCloud or one of many Apps that send yourself a VCF file containing your contacts.
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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.
That said, AB is designed for one person per card, so where I have a John X and Jane Y I give them separate cards (apart from anything else they probably have different email addresses and mobile numbers) and link them together with a related names field. If I use AB to print mailing labels it will put "John X and Jane Y" over the shared postal address.
AK

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

In all previous versions of Address Book, the user could simply type 'T' to instantly go to contacts with last names that start with 'T' (and businesses that start with 'T').
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.
It sounds like someone at Apple decided this was a better way to search for contacts, because this change in search method is described in the new Address Book 'Help' file; it says, "As you type, Address Book begins to search all the information on the cards, including notes, and displays matching contacts, with the matching text highlighted in each card." For example, let's say someone used to type 'T' to search for a contact named Bill Tilman. Now what happens is that Address Book stops at the first person who's first name starts with 'T', and highlights all the T's in the person's card (the T in 'telephone', the T in 'Street', etc. The user must now scroll through all their contacts manually to find Bill Tilman, or else manually type out the complete name 'Bill Tilman'. (If they just type 'Bill', they will only get the first person named Bill.)
I hope Apple will reconsider and will allow Address Book to do the quick one-letter searches by last name (as opposed to 'Sort' by last name, which it still has) like it used to. (Or at least make this a choice in Address Book Preferences.) This would also be more compatible with the way iPhone searches for contacts; when you select a letter in the iPhone's contacts, it finds contacts who's last name starts with that letter, as well as businesses, just like Address Book always used to.

Thanks for your response Ernie. You are correct in that whenever you type a series of letters, Address Book (as it always has) finds every single thing with that combination of letters - Names, businesses, adjectives, people's dogs' names, letters in product serial numbers, etc. This is useful for finding a subject on the Web, or finding all documents related to 'iPhoto' on your Mac, etc., but not useful, quick or convenient when trying to find one person to call in your Address Book (which is what people use Address Book for).
What is DIFFERENT in the Snow Leopard version, is that the ability to type one letter to instantly go to last names with that letter has been removed. Previously, you could easily find 'Bill Tilman' in one second by simply typing 'T'. Now you get every word that starts with T and all the words in the card that have a T in them. If you type out a full name like 'Bill', it finds every person named Bill. No one would ever want to find all their contacts named Bill to call them. You could type out the full last name 'Tilman', but there again you are forced to type out a complete name to do a search. It would actually be quicker to scroll down and find it manually. The ability to type a single letter to find the last name (or business name) of a contact you needed to call, was much quicker and easier than having to type out the entire name.

Address book keeps adding surnames to contacts??

Is this some sort of bug or am I doing something wrong?
I sync my address book with my .mac account and my macbook pro. Seems to work ok but here's the problem I'm having scenario...a contact in my address book on my mac has just a First name and an email address. Then somehow either through syncing with .mac or for some other reason it suddenly has a Last name - does this somehow get automatically added becasue of the email address? Also I have another example - a contact has two names written in the First name section and nothing in the Last name (example Katie Jane in the First name) the contacts email address has no mention of the names yet somehow the name Jane gets added to the Last name section - so the contact details read Katie Jane Jane....
this is driving me crazy
can anyone help?

just synched one machine again and its gone up to 1230 contacts including 228 "No name" contacts... what is going on?
Mr_London

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

Thunderbird gets all suggestions for addressing from one of your address books. You have two books by default. The Personal and the Collected books. If you have sent an email to the wrong address then it will be in your collected book for sure. You need to go there and delete it and then find any other occurrences of the incorrect address and fix or delete it.

Sort address book (and show) company names

Hi all,
I would like to be able to do the following in Address book. Any help/suggestions would be most appreciated:
1) Display a contacts First/Last name and the company they work for in the list of names
2) Sort the list of contacts by company they work for
The reason I want to do this is so that for our media list we can put in the individual PR contacts names, email address and blog, website etc they work for and then be able to quickly see this information without having to click on each one. It will also speed up dragging multiple contacts to one email.
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.
It does seem somewhat strange that the list view cannot at least show some pertinent info about each contact without having to click on them...

you should back up your whole system not just those two files. then you'll never miss anything. what's your backup setup?
the address book data is stored in home directory/library/application support/address book and the ical data in home directory/library/calendars.

Address Book Changes Main Account Name . . .

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!
Where is this coming from?
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?

I discovered that it is coming from Apple Mail. When you have your name in Apple Mail in the "Previous Recipients" it somehow gets grabbed and transfered from there. When you remove it from the "Previous Recipients" and then set your Address Book how you like your name to be, it sticks!

Address Book is adding last name. I need it to stop. Help?

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