Address Book printing completely broken

I cannot print at all from Address Book. I am trying to print labels on an iMac G5 with 10.5.8. Here's what happens:
I have a group with about 25 contacts selected in the left column, then choose File>Print. (Often the first time I choose print it does nothing, so I choose print again.) When the print dialog opens, the preview is blank and underneath it says "Sorting..." but never seems to stop. If I then choose the "Layout" tab and click on any of the drop-down menus, the addresses show up in the preview, but "Sorting..." never goes away. The number of addresses reported and previewed in the print dialog is seemingly random (11 or 13 or 22 of the actual 25).
At this point, if I click "Print," the Address Book print settings disappear from the dialog and nothing happens. If I press cancel, either the same thing happens or the whole app crashes. Print to pdf doesn't work either.
I tried printing from a MacBook that is synced to my iMac with MobileMe, but got the same results. I also reinstalled the 10.5.8 combo update and repaired permissions.

Okay, the one test I didn't try before posting turned out to be the answer. The group included some contacts that did not have complete addresses. I didn't realize how badly that would screw things up. After selecting only the contacts with complete addresses everything worked as expected.

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Help! Address Book search is broken (on MacBook)

The search function on Address Book no longer works on my MacBook running 10.7.5
There seem to be a number of other related problems. Two of them are:
- Contacts won't open
- Difficult to create new contacts
- Difficult to delete cards
It would be too long to go into details, which seem to change by the day anyway. All I know is it's broken. Is there a way to reinstall? Or do some kind of diagnostic?
Many thanks!
PS: I tried to post a similar discussion last week, but there seems to be no record of it. If you find it (it has the same title) please let me know.

Hello aliapis,
Welcome to the forums.
In this case we can try to reload the software on the BlackBerry® smartphone to make sure it is running the latest version and there are no issues with the OS.
Here is how to backup your BlackBerry smartphone http://bbry.lv/oPVWXc
Once you have backed up your BlackBerry smartphone please follow the link below to complete a clean reload of the BlackBerry smartphone software.
Link: http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/KB03621
Once completed test it and proceed with a selective restore, here is how to restore http://bbry.lv/qgQxLo
Thank you
-SR
Come follow your BlackBerry Technical Team on twitter! @BlackBerryHelp
Be sure to click Kudos! for those who have helped you.Click Solution? for posts that have solved your issue(s)!

How can I make Address Book print labels how I want, or export to Word?

I have found a number of serious problems with Address Book, which unless I can overcome them mean it is entirely useless for me. Almost all are to do with creating mailing labels or envelopes:
1.I can't find any way of defining a sheet format for labels different from those on the pre-defined list. My labels are in 2 columns of 8, on a sheet 12” long by 8” wide, margins 0.5mm top and bottom, and ½” left and right. The labels themselves are 3½” x1½”. Address Book can't do it. It is odd that this is so restrictive, whereas with envelopes one has total flexibility.
2.Although I can define which address I want to print on each label or envelope, I can't find a way of defining which field should be used for the first (name) line. It always consists of the First and Last names as recorded on each card. This is not what I want. For different mailings, I want to use different first lines, as in many cases each card is the address of a family group, the First and Last names simply recording the names of the parents e.g., John and Mary Smith. But for my Christmas mailing I want to print 'The Smith Family', whereas for my charity mailshots I want to print 'Mrs Mary Smith', as she is the charity supporter, not her husband or children.
3.The address layout seems to be fixed, with each element on a separate line. This is not how I want to print, as in some cases it makes for too many lines, particularly on labels. I want to put the zip/post-code on the same line as the county or state, separated by about ½”. But I can't see how to dictate the layout at all. On labels there is a further problem, in that I can't define a vertical and/or horizontal off-set for the text.
4.The Country does not print at all on labels, making the application quite useless for foreign mailings, and I can't find a way of overcoming this. Over half our mailing addresses are affected by this.
5. And another problem really puts the final cherry on the icing of this cake: There is no way I can find of exporting the data from the address book in a format, e.g. a csv file, that I can bring into a word processor where I could do these mailings how I want them. Not only does the box fail to do what I need, it is also locked.
I don't understand why, having set up Address Book on the database principle that one should have have to record each contact only once no matter how many ways one needs to use the data, it seems it has then been implemented in a way that prevents it being used in one of the most obvious ways, to print addresses in a format of the user's choice.
The Applecare adviser tells me the problems I have can't be overcome. Is that right, or is she, and I missing something? Please help.

noondaywitch wrote:
"It's Christmas card time again and the fact that Address Book is useless for this purpose is really frustrating."
While I sympathise with the functionality of Address Book, I'm old-fashioned enough to write my cards and envelopes by hand (shock! horror!) and get quite p***-off to receive bulk-printed stuff.
Just a thought, peeps.
It'd be all too easy to follow that up with a cheapshot making reference to how many Christmas cards you have to send, but I'll rise above that and explain that some of us might want to use this for business contacts and have 300+ cards to address.
It is a shame that the printing feature from Address Book is so close, yet so far from performing this simple task. It is a shame that Pages can run mail merge, but only for one record per page (which is useless for label printing). It is also a shame that MS Word for Mac does proper labels but doesn't recognise Address Book as a datasource.
These things are all a shame because with Apple's software, you rather expect things to "just work", as per their advertising, and when very simple things don't "just work", it difficult not to feel cheated.

In Address book print window opened too large for window. Unable to close

Using Address book, trying to print lables for a group, print window opened to large for window.... cannot cancel or close out.

In general, in any window presented which calls for user action, if a button is highlighted (usually in blue if the OS is in charge) then pressing Return or Enter will do the same as clicking that button.
Most of the time the highlighted button is the one which is most usable - the "Print" button in that dialog window, for example, or the "Save" button in a Save dialog window.
The keystroke Command-. (Command-periodkey) will usually invoke a "Cancel" button if such is present in a window.

Address Book Print list view column format

Is there a way of changing the column width of the List View when printing the contacts in Address Book? I select all contacts, check the boxes for address and notes and send so PDF in Preview. The left hand column (Names) takes nearly half the page width. The center column with all the addresses, e-mails and notes is very narrow, which causes the text to wrap in the middle of the address or e-mail.
If it can't be changed, does anyone know of an application that will use the address book data and allow me to format pages to my specification?

Thank you KT. I downloaded the utility and was able to create a tab delimited file from Address Book. I also imported the data into Numbers but I could not produce a report format I wanted. I was afraid I was forced to copy the data into Windows and use one of the many address book formatters.
I kept searching the web and read about Palm Desktop for Mac but that did not include the Notes field. Last night, I believe I found a reasonable solution, it is called "Address Book Reports" by Scruffy Software. There are choices of format and page size. I will try it out today and if it's OK will send the $15 shareware fee.

Address book print command pulls other info into address

When I set up to print labels from the address book, it pulls other family member names into the first line of the address even tho they are not part of the contacts name. Any way to avoid this?

The only way to avoid this is to not have that other information in the Contact. I think this document explains it pretty well: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3952

Lion address book prints extra page

For years I had no trouble printing envelopes straight from Address book. But since I upgraded to Lion, when I print an envelope, it prints (1) the envelope just fine, but then also (2) a blank 8.5"x11" page. How do I get it to stop printing the extra page?

HP printers for years have had a problem printing an extra envelope from the Apple Addressbook Application with the # 10 envelope.
Solution: Select a #9 envelop. This prints about the same size and does not have an extra envelope.
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On System 7.4 I cannot find a way to change the orientation to verticle as described above.
I have told Apple.

Address book, print out of groups

How can I print a header when I do a print out of a group ?

I found this which does the job perfectly, integrated for Address Book:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/18672
shareware.
roger

Does Address Book print one name to a sheet of labels?

Hi, newbie here and have searched the forums for this answer but to no avail. I'd like to print 1 contact to a whole sheet of labels (Avery 5164 with 6 labels per page) so they're ready in advance each I need them on an ad hoc basis. Is there a way to get Address Book to do this as I can only print 1 label per sheet at the moment.
Regards
Colin

I just went through this headache myself. While searching for a solution, I came across your post.
Now, I'm back to share my answer.
I went to Avery's website and found free software for the Mac to do just that. Just go to their website and select Downloads. Look for DesignPro for Mac.
<Edited by Moderator>
Cheers!

Address Book Print problems

I noticed a probable bug in the new version of Address Book in Mountain Lion.
When I want to print a list of my contacts this did not appear in alphabetical order but the printed list is in random order.
This did not happen in the previous version of Lion.
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Massimo

I just found a way to print contacts in ABC order. I signed in to my iCloud account online, then went to Contacts. I selected the contact group I wanted to print on the left page (example Xmas card list). On the right page at the bottom, I clicked on the gear symbol and clicked "select all", then clicked again on "print". When the print window appeared, I saved the file to PDF, just to see if the information was in ABC. It was!
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Address Book - Name Completion Search Order missing books

We have Groupwise 8.0.2 running on Netware 6.5 SP8
Problem: in the Address Book, the Name Completion Search Order shows different Available Books depending on the computer, but no computer has all the available books.
Computer 1: (the user's pc): Windows 7. The Available Books has only the Groupwise Address Book and the Frequent Contacts. It does not show the user's personal address book as being available, it is not even listed in the box.
Computer 2: Windows 7. The available books box is empty.
Computer 3: (my pc) Windows XP. Logging into Groupwise with the user's account, the available books box is empty (same as Computer 2), but when I go into my account, all 3 books are showing (Groupwise, Personal, and Frequent Contacts)

Hi
like Laura said, there are different misc. support options for gwcheck:
PABCHANGEFIX
PABDELDUPREC
PABFIX
PABONLY
Do they correct anything if you run them
1. against the caching mailbox (if used)
2. against the online box?
IMHO there should be a "how to" when the users personal address book is missing/deleted and not just closed...
Just google a bit ;)
Cheers,
Pascal

Address book - printing group address letter using only business address

I have a group that has business and home addresses for each person. I want to print mailing labels with just the business addresses. I went to address help and it told me to choose edit > edit distribution list. Now comes the problem. When I am in address book and click on edit the edit distribution list is always grey so I can't select it. What do I need to do so that it is selectable or is there another way to have it only print the business addresses instead of two labels for each person (one business address and one personal address)?
Thanks,
Tammy

I wound up deleting this group so that when I synced from desktop to laptop, I wouldn't be sending the corrupted address. But since they are all still in the All listing, I will check them out one by one and see what the particular problem was. I suspect it was an address that included a suite or apartment number and was just two long for the template.
Thanks for your help!

ISync does not properly retrieve address book data, links broken

Hello,
My syncing attempts with my Motorola phone keep failing (no data is transmitted to the phone; the phone has no contacts currently). I think I can see the problem: iSync has different groups of contacts in its list than that exist in address book. What I mean is: in the dropdown menu in iSync where you can select what group of contacts to sync, it has the groups that I once had in address book, but which are now changed. I think this happened since I installed snowleopard. During my leopard days, I moved some apps to different folders; with the install of snowleopard, I think the links between the apps have not been reset well.
Do you know how to fix this?

The most likely solution is to launch iSync application ,and then in the preferences menu, click on Reset Sync History button. This resets configurations for the iTunes synchronization of calendars and address books.

Address Book contacts completely missing

I don't know what may have triggered this, but it happened in the last week or so.
I have been using Address Book to store and sync my contacts for over a year now. Just a few days ago I wanted to make some changes, but when I opened Address Book it was totally empty! When I look in the Users/~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Metadata folder, all of the contact cards are still listed there, and using quicklook I can see that the info is still in tact.
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When I type a contact into Mail, however, it sees all of the contacts just fine, so I'm guessing there's a problem with Address Book not referencing the Metadata folder (only a guess). I'm attaching a picture of what I see, if that will help.
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Address Book - is it broken or just ME ?

First - I looked for an Address Book forum --- hmm ,,,, do not see one
Ever since upgrading to 10.7 in address book on notes section - the cursor will jump to the top of the notes and I continue typing ... messing up the data ... wish Icould type and NOT look at the keyboard ... but
No one has this problem ?
on both work and home mac laptops using external keyboards
Help ?
Thanks
Greg H

Hi Alonski
It seems to happen less often ... but since I type looking at the keys ( not the screen ) -- can get really messed up when it happens ....
My original problem ,,,,, "Ever since upgrading to 10.7 in address book on notes section - the cursor will jump to the top of the notes and I continue typing ... messing up the data ... wish Icould type and NOT look at the keyboard ... but"
Anyone with a fix .... I really have not warmed up to the new address book yet ...
Greg

Address Book printing completely broken

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