Address Book, smart lists

Can anyone tell me why Apple has ignored Address Book? It has been a couple of years now, and I still cannot sync smart lists from my Address Book. It's such a simple thing. Does anybody know a work around that will AUTOMATICALLY allow my smart lists to be synced with the iPhone?

I am having a similar problem, related to Contacts, not with old but with brand new Smart Groups.
This morning, I tried to add a Smart Group using the OSX 10.8.2 Contacts app, but upon hitting OK, the program froze.
Your suggested list of steps to remove the offending smartlist begins by exporting the contacts to a separate file. Since, at the moment, the contacts app is unable to load without freezing immediately, the option of exporting the contacts to a file is not available.
How bout the simple solution of having a program that works? If I create a smart group it should just work! Not cause the freezing of the app! OK now having said that. Any suggestions for how to either use Smart Groups or Eliminate them (perhaps using third party apps to clean up the Smart Group mess?).
Thanks

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When forwarding an e-mail I have lost the address book contact list on the left side.

I used to have the address book contact list on the left side of the page being forwarded to allow easy selection of addressees. It's gone and I need it back.
Thank you very much

Open a Write window and press F9 to toggle the Contact Sidebar on and off.
You can also turn it on from the View menu in the Write window.

Does Lion allow you to edit the Address Book chat list yet so you can add Skype or Gmail? Real pain not having these

Does Lion allow you to edit the Address Book chat list yet so you can add Skype or Gmail?
Real pain not having these
Thanks
Carl

Does Lion allow you to edit the Address Book chat list yet so you can add Skype or Gmail?
Real pain not having these
Thanks
Carl

How can I edit an Address Book Distribution List that will not display in Lion?

The option to edit an Address Book Distribution List (to select preferred emails for certain contacts) only appears as light print and does not respond to selection. I have a number of Address Groups that display and funtion properly in Mail, but since installing Lion, the problem described occurs. Any fix? Thanks.

The key is that the Contact List is now being kept in the Cloud & you cannot edit the Distribution List in your Mac's Address Book.
The fix is:
Quit your Address Book
Go to  Menu --> Sys Preferences --> iCloud
Uncheck the CONTACTS icon
Close Sys Pref
Open Address Book - Edit your Distribution Lists (No longer Greyed out)
Quit Address Book
Go to  Menu --> Sys Preferences --> iCloud
Check the CONTACTS icon
You should be good to go!
Hope this helps!
...John

Importing AOL Address Book/Contact List into Apple Mail Program

This is probably an old and already answered queation, but it has just come up for me. Does anyone know how to export the AOL Address Book/Contact List so it can be imported into the Apple Mail Program? I would like not to have to reinter all the address when I drop AOL.
@ GHz Intel Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.4) No DVD

The AOL Service Assistant works fine for transfering the AOL contacts to the Apple Address Book. However, I was unable to get the AOL favorites to tansfer to Safari. It keeps hanging up with the rotating basketball. Any further suggestions?
466 MHz PowerPC G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9) No DVD

Using Address Book, distribution list contact does not appear

Using 10.7.4, added a name to an address book distribution list but it does not appear in the email "to" address. Had added to people previously and it worked fine but not with the last entry. Verified that the contact's name, address, etc. all correct and does display in the distribution list but not in the "to" field of an email. Very strange!

The key is that the Contact List is now being kept in the Cloud & you cannot edit the Distribution List in your Mac's Address Book.
The fix is:
Quit your Address Book
Go to  Menu --> Sys Preferences --> iCloud
Uncheck the CONTACTS icon
Close Sys Pref
Open Address Book - Edit your Distribution Lists (No longer Greyed out)
Quit Address Book
Go to  Menu --> Sys Preferences --> iCloud
Check the CONTACTS icon
You should be good to go!
Hope this helps!
...John

Address Book Smart Groups and Custom Fields

Anyone have issues syncing Smart Groups in Address Book? Seems like an awful waste of resources if we cannot keep that synced between MobileMe, our Mac/PC and iPhone.
Also, same issue with custom fields I've created for certain contacts. For example, I've created hours of operation for certain businesses. These fields sync into my contacts in MobileMe but it's not pushed to my iPhone. Again, such a waste to have information that cannot be maintained.

I have been advised by the .Mac team that Address Book Smart Groups cannot be synched between two (or more) computers using .Mac

Address Book Distribution List - Multi Selection

In sending email to all members of a Smart Group, I need to send to more than one address per vCard (e.g. home AND work email, or his AND her address) But Edit Distribution List won't allow multiple selections. Is there a work around?

I want to do the very same thing and it seems as if the Address Book does not support it. Which is VERY strange since this should be a very typical use case for many users. Not just you and me.
The only workaround I have found is to create multiple cards for contacts that have multiple e-mail addresses and include these cards in the group I want to use for my distribution list. This is a very ugly solution.. Very unlike Apple. (And it means unnecessary work - especially at the time of updates when a number of identical card copies will have to be kept consistent).
The same solution was suggested in this previous discussion:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6231029&#6231029

Address Book Smart Group question

Hello all,
I want to create a Smart Group in Address Book that compiles people according to their job title.
For example a group of everyone whose job title is 'Manager', i.e. Job Title contains Manager. But for some reason Job Title is not in the list of options when creating a Smart Group.
Is there a way to make it work?
Also, (a question for all the Snow Leopard users) is the option for Job Title there in OSX 10.6?
I'm using Tiger 10.4.11.
Thanks all.

There is no such field for Job Title by default. If you select the Add Field item from the Card menu you can add that field to a card. However, I do not see Job Title as a search field for a Smart Group. I assume this is a bug which you can report here: Feedback.

Address book smart folders

Does anyone know how to setup a folder, group folder or smart folder in the address book to include all the entries that are not in another group folder. Let me explain, we have lots of entries in the address book, my wife created a group folder called Christmas List & dragged all the appropriate folks into that folder, now she wants a folder that lists all the entries that are NOT in that folder. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Lee

Hi Lee:
That would be a great feature but Address Book doesn't know how to do this.

My Address Book Wish List

Just sent the following to Apple Feedback. Curious to see if any others share similar hopes -- or if any of my requests are in fact already possible, but I've just been too dense to figure out how to do them:
(using AB 4.0.4 under OX X 10.4.8)
Nine Improvements Many Address Book Users (including me)
Would Really Like To See:
1) Phone dialer function.
Since Macs still have internal modems, why not take advantage of the fact and provide users with the option of having Address Book dial the number you've just used Address Book to look up? There are 3rd party apps that do this, but it's the kind of feature that really should be built right in for full compatibility.
2) Auto Fill + Auto Capitalization options for each text field.
Users should be able to designate which text fields do or do not use one or both. (Previous editions of Address Book had a hyper-active auto-fill function, while the latest version seems to have abandoned it altogether.)
The auto capitalization should work the same as when you start typing a name into Mac Mail's "To" field, offering a list of possible matches (different cities, for example), beginning with the one most recently used.
The auto capitalization should be a separate user pref which can be turned on or off for any text field.
3) More display options for Name column
Specifically, it would be nice to be able to have Last Name / First Name for scrolling through the Name column, but still show First Name / Last Name in the individual Card View on the right.
4) More intelligent search capability
For example, by entering a phrase with quote marks, I should be able to see only those cards which contain that exact phrase, not just any card which happens to contain any one of the words in the phrase.
5) Intelligent handling of two-surname couples.
For non-business, personal entries, there's a reality out there which needs to be acknowledged: there are a lot of unmarried couples sharing the same address and basic contact info, AND there are many married couples where the wife has retained her own surname.
Address Book needs to be able to deal with two-surname couples much more intelligently, so that (for example) a search can be run using EITHER surname to access the same card. Also, you've got an Anniversary field, but apparently no option to add a second "Birthday" date (since most couples do have different birthdays).
There needs to be a basic template in which the members of couples with different surnames each get equal "weight" in the database -- and this applies to same-sex couples as well, so the pairs of Surname and Birthday fields should not be automatically designated as "His" and "Hers".
6) Ways to enter partial dates
For certain date fields (such as "Brthday" and "Anniversary"), it's often the case where only a year is know, or a year and a month but not the exact date. Sometimes a date is just a best guess or an approximation. But Address Book seems determined to create a complete date, using the current month and day if none are entered, and not even letting manually erase same after it does.
A little flexibility here, please! I know I can put anything I want down in the Notes field, but couldn't the Birthday and Anniversary ones be made a little less rigid in their formatting?
7) Remember the new template fields when editing
I've added several new fields for the template which appears when I create a new entry. But it's annoying when those new fields all disappear as soon as I then need to edit that entry later on.
You've given us the option to add additional fields to our default template when we CREATE a new entry; why not also give us the option to access those same additional fields (and field names in the pull down lists) when we EDIT the same entry?
This should even apply to entries which were originally created using the original Apple template -- the new fields and field names created by the user should become available whenever you go into Edit mode.
8) Make Distribution Lists easily printable, exportable, and more flexible.
Should be able to select more than one e-address from a particular contact for a distribution list (as in both members of a couple, or both the home and work e-addresses for a particular individual -- instead of having to create a separate card just for those separate e-addresses).
Also like to be able to simply copy/paste a distribution list (and/or Export it as a Tab or Paragraph delineated text file), which I could either print out, or e-mail to a friend who needed it, etc.
9) Hours of Operation field.
For commercial/business entries, a default "Hours" field would be nice, with some sort of easy-to-select options to facilitate entering the times a business, a store, or even a customer service line is open on given days. There should even be the ability to enter seasonal hours for different times of year.
I hope that these features have already been incorporated into the next release of Address Book -- and if not, that you'll give serious consideration to implementing them as soon as possible. Your users will thank you.

Download AddressBookToCSV 1.1 from www.versiontracker.com. It will export your contacts to a CSV file that can be imported by Gmail.
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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 Wish List Additions???

As a long time Mac user I find Address Book extremely lame in that it lacks many helpful usability features that were standard in older third party contact managers. Ever since Now-Up-to-Date bought out and stupidly extinguished Touchbase/Datebook, Macheads have had to put up with less than optimal address book solutions. In the hope that Apple's AB developers peruse this forum once in a while, I'd like to start a wish list of features I'd like to see in a future version...please copy, append and post your suggestions to this list as well.
1. Selectable auto-capitalization with manual field override when in auto-cap mode.
2. Selectable auto-fill with manual field override
3. Ability to query contact database and to mark, unmark, select, sort, total and display contacts in printable listings. I still use my dinosaur Touchbase program in Classic to perform marketing studies on my business's house list. TB provides an elegant usability model.
4. Ability to save and edit custom list formats.
5. Selectable Alpha-tab A-Z index at top of contact window.
6. Ability to auto-dial numbers from contact window or menu bar.
7. Integration with Text Edit or ??? to create auto-letters.

Here's my 2 cents worth:
Allow users of Address Book to --
1. Auto select an address from Address Book by typing in a nickname associated with an Address Card. (i.e. "mom" or "gramps").
2. Set a preferred or default email address for cards in your "ALL" group, just like you can when you select "Edit Distribution List…" from the EDIT menu on a particular distribution group. (Kind of like how you set Favorites on the iPhone in the Phone application)

Why Address Book Smart Group Doesn't Work?

I'm unable to find a solution to, or explination for, the following problem with Address Book and Smart Folders.
I added a custom date field for my contacts.
Set the date for one year and five days ago.
Created Smart folder with condition:
custom date 'is not within' one year.
Well, my contact I created with custom date of one year and five days ago did not appear in the smart group I created.
But it does appear in a smart group with condition 'is within' one month.
Seems that the Smart Group is ignoring the year. Doesn't seem very smart to me, lol.
Any advice on what is going on, or how to fix it would be greatly appreciated. I've spent hours looking for answers online and haven't found anything. Thanks in advance for your help.
tags: date field, date conditions, errors, problems,

Hi The Zack,
In case you think you are crazy, I can confirm that in this area you are not. I just switched from years of PC drudgery to the the new Mac religion. I even switched all my email/address/calendar stuff to pure Apple. Some bumps and hiccups, but still I guess the real test is when I log back onto my old PC I feel like I am watching a rerun of a black and white sitcom.
I digress. On of my hiccups is exactly the same as yours. Address Book is always able to search. It seems a good number of the names in my address book can not be found by typing in any part of their information in the search box. I could not fix this by duplicating the address entry, but I could get it work by hand typing in a new duplicate address entry. I am hoping you and Barry discover a cleaner solution to this.
Thx, Kmon23

Address Book sorting list print

I noticed today a strange behaviour of the print function in Mac Os X Mountain Lion Address Book.
I have to print the entire contacts list.
I ckecked the "Sort by Last Name" in preferences, and on the video everithing is as expected.
So I tried to print ad with my big surprise all the contacts are totally mixed!
I can't find any sort rule! Just one contact after another!
At the moment I thought that I made a mistake in some settings.
I checked the entire print window and I havent found any option to set the sorting list preference.
Maybe is very well hidden........
Can anybody help?

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19330865
Hope this helps.

Address Book, smart lists

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