Changing multipel Adress Book entries at once?

Heya everybody.
Does anyone know any way to change like a 100 Adress Book entries at once?
I have a bunch of contacts that work at the same company. And say for example that the company changed name from Banana Computers to Banana Hardware and I just want to change that one thing for all my contacts?
I have seen a similar option in almost every other Mac OS X applications, iPhoto, iTunes etc. But I can't seem to find it in Adress Book.
Even if it's not in there, I think there should be some Automator work action for it. But it seems that the Automator actions for Adress Book are totally useless. And I've searched for new ones.
Please help this is killing me.

You nee to use Applescript. Try this one.
AK
click here to open this script in your editor<pre style="font-family: 'Monaco', 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; overflow:auto; color: #222; background: #DDD; padding: 0.2em; font-size: 10px; width:400px">tell application "Address Book"
repeat with ThisOne in people
if organization of ThisOne = "Banana Computers" then
set organization of ThisOne to "Banana Hardware"
end if
end repeat
end tell</pre>
(The recent upgrade to the discussions has disabled the link that allows direct opening of a script, so run Script Editor and copy in the script.)

Similar Messages

How to reflect changes to Address Book entries?

I have 2 SL clients connected to a SL server with Address Book bound. But when I make a change to the one my "Office Contacts" entries, the change doesn't get reflected anywhere (only locally). Even if I make the change in Workgroup Manager, I still have to remove the old entry from Address Book and re-add it so that the new information is displayed. Shouldn't changes to an Open Directory user "Info" be reflected in Address Book?

OK. Note that I haven't got 10.7, so haven't tested it on 10.7
Start by making a backup copy of the Address Book data. You will probably need to use Finder's Go/Go to folder to navigate to Library in your Home directory, and look in it's Application Support folder to make a copy of the Address Book folder.
Then run Script Editor, paste in this script and click Run. It should find any numbers that match your spec, and display to you what it will be changed to. When you are happy with the changes being offered click Cancel instead of OK and, in the script, put -- (two minus signs) before the line
display dialog (NewNumb as text) and remove the -- from the line below it. Run the script again and it should make the changes.
--Change phone numbers beginning with 041 11 to 041 11 9
--AK July 2012
tell application "Address Book"
          repeat with Acontact in people
                    repeat with APhone in phones of Acontact
                              if (value of APhone as text) starts with "041 11" then
                                        set NewNumb to (value of APhone as text)
                                        set NewNumb to characters 7 thru -1 of NewNumb
                                        set NewNumb to "041 11 9" & NewNumb
display dialog (NewNumb as text)
--set value of APhone to NewNumb
                              end if
                    end repeat
          end repeat
end tell

I can't restaure my adress book backup from Leopard in Tiger

May seem a little complicated, but I had to reinstall Tiger over Leopard which I used for some times. So I had made a backup of my adress book entries (.abbu)and tried to restaure it in adress book on tiger but nothing had showed up.
Is there anything to do with the system, is it that the adress book on Leopard version is no more compatible on Tiger?

Do you know if there's a compatibility problem between Leopard and Snow Leopard.
It's not that there's a problem, it's that they are different versions and some things have changed, so trying to import a backup from an earlier version probably won't work. If you have another Mac with Tiger on it (even on it's own bootable partition, you can load the backup and then export all the contacts as a single vCard file and get it into Address Book on Leopard or Snow Leopard without a problem.

How to avoide multiple duplicate entries in adress book?

How to avoide multiple duplicate entries in adress book? I can add the same contact name and number more than twice and the phone isn't warning me at all!!! I's quite a heck for me.

not possible from inside AB AFAIK. but you can do the following. in finder open the folder /users/username/library/application support/address book/metdata. switch to the list mode and sort by date modified. quicklook the vcards at the top to see which ones they are.

My Adress Book shows strange behavior, cannot search or edit

Hi folks!
I recently updated to Lion, also switched my .me to iCloud. At first everything was perfect, now I am experiencing strange behaviours:
I am starting to add fotos to my contacts because I like the view in Mail.app where the contact fotos are shown in the list of emails. After I added some more photos I cannot search in the address book anymore. Typing a name into the search field and nothing happens. Also clicking on a name an nothing happens on the right side. Absolutely nothing. There's only one entry that does not change and when hitting the "edit" Button, only this one contact is changed. Also this one contact changes when doing a right click on a contact name on the left side.
I did some searches here but did not find anything. What I did was deleting the "AddressBook-v22.abcddb" in the ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/ Folder as suggested in some other threads but this does not change anything.
This is really annoying and I cannot use my Address Book which I really need. I have more than 2000 contacts inside and it's essential for my business!
Please help!
Thanks and best, Jochen
Message was edited by: Joo-Chen, typo

OK, seems like I can replicate the behaviour:
- repair Disk Permissions
- restart MBP (do not open all apps again)
- after reboot, only the Finder is open
- open Address Book
- click on contact name on the left side, brings details on the right, editing works also -> great!
- click in the search field and type a name
-> no filter of the list or search result appears
- click on any contact left hand side, nothing happens on the right, the last clicked contact before the search remains open
- double click on contact name opens separate window as expected
- no search possible anymore
- no editing possible anymore
-> again repair permissions, and restart and same procedure ...
this is Adress Book 6.1 (1062) on MacBook Pro 17'' with 10.7.2

Lost all my concats in my adresse book

I was putting new adresses in my adresse book and there in 2 sec, the were all gone.... is there a way I can get them back???????
Thank you

I am sure your English is much better than my German, Italian, French, or any other language would be. I have once been to the beautiful city of Geneva, Switzerland and am amazed at the ability of its residents to master several different languages, and their kindness when dealing with Americans like myself who can barely master just one. But I am still not clear about some of the things you say. I will do my best to make myself clear to you by numbering the important questions I must ask about this, and then discussing what I mean about each one:
1. When you say "new files without name show up," where did these things show up?
In the main Address Book window there are 3 columns. On the left is the list of groups. In the center is the list of names of all contacts (people or companies) in the selected group. On the right is the information about the selected contact. The information in the right column includes things like names, email addresses, street addresses, a picture of the contact, and so on. In English, Apple calls each contact a "card," because it is like a business card or a card in a rotary office file.
Did these 20 new things show up in this window? If they did, which column did the show up in?
I ask because none of these things would be a "file." When you create a new entry (a new "card"), all of the information is blank at first -- no name, email address, or anything else. You can do this by clicking the "+" button at the bottom of the name list. This may be what you did, but you would have to do it 20 times to create 20 new blank entries (cards).
2. What did you highlight when you "try to delete only this one"?
Was it in the group or name column, or something in the contact information? Is is possible you highlighted more than one thing?
3. How did you try to delete this one?
If not with the "-" button or keyboard, did you drag something to the trash, or use the menu?
I am not sure any of this is important because it does sound like you somehow have lost all your contacts. I ask these things only in the hope that I do not understand what happened.
If your Mac is new or you are still covered by Applecare, it might be best for you to contact Applecare in your country for better help than I can offer you. You may also want to try posting here in your own language. I won't understand you but someone else who does may be able to help you more.

How do i remove my photo from my Address Book entry?

two questions: first, how do i remove my photo from my entry in Address Book? i should be able to click "Edit", select my photo and hit the Delete key and be done, but no - hitting the Delete key does nothing except make the photo blink.
second, i just posted a comment on a web page that i've never been to before, on a site that i've never been to before, and my photo appeared on the web page next to my comment. very creepy. anybody know why this is and how i make it stop? does it have something to do with my Address Book entry?
update: i've consulted Address Book's help and it tells me to select the card then go Card -> Clear custom image, but when i do, that menu item is grayed out.
further update: i've worked around the problem by taking a screen shot of a blank white area of a webpage and making that my photo...but i shouldn't have to do that and would still like to know how one actually deletes one's photo from Address Book. Address Book's help indicates that i'll find such photos in Library/Images/People, but there's no such directory in any of my Library folders. Address Book's help is not being very helpful today.
tia...

there is actually no way to completely delete an image for you address book entry. you can only change it to something else as you did.
as for the image on that website, most likely it pulled your photo from your webpage on some site like My Space, Facebook etc. do you have a page like that? some sites will tap directly into your webpage and pull your pic from it.

How can I delete ALL of my Address Book entries and start fresh?

Yes. I know that sounds extreme, but……
I use Outlook on a PC at my office, and I have an sbcglobal/Yahoo mail account. I look upon my office Outlook as my ultimate contacts list (over 1,100 entries) and my calendar.
I use the sbc supplied free Intellisync software to sync all of my calendar and contacts from my office PC into sbc/Yahoo. That way I actually get e-mail reminders of appointments, etc. in addition to my Outlook notifications. It is actually pretty nifty.
I have also successfully signed-on to my Yahoo account at home on my MAC and exported all of my contacts from Yahoo (which had been populated by the PC Outlook listings via Intellisync) onto my desktop and then imported them into Address Book. But I did that some time ago and now my Outlook listings have been updated rather substantially. I would like to able to do a complete re-install of the new and improved contacts from the Yahoo repository.
Again - I certainly do not want to delete the Address Book app itself – I just want to start with a clean slate so there are no conflicts or duplicate entries (which in fact is seemingly a bug in the Yahoo/Intellisync. Is there a way to completely wipe clean all of my Address Book entries?
Thanks
Theo
G4 (FW800) Mirrored doors Mac OS X (10.4.8) Dual 1.42GHz; 1.5GB DDR SDRAM; 20" HD Cinema Display; iSight;

Hello Allan -
Your help on a previous post was great re: my wanting to know how to delete the Address Book contents so I can re-import an updated list form my office Outlook, via my yahho/sbcglobal import.
Well - here is an interesting quandary:
I have successfully exported my yahoo address book/contacts as a .vcf file Yet - once I have expunged the prior Address Book data and want to now import the NEW Yahoo data to rebuild the database it only takes (enters) the phone numbers and does NOT import ANY of the address information. I am positive I did this once since our original exchange and everything transferred just fine, but now….?!
What I cannot determine is where the fault may be: does the export NOT include the addresses (in which case I am doing something fundamentally stupid wit the export) or the vcf cards are complete, but Address Book is not “seeing” anything other than the phone #s and e-mail addresses.
Any thoughts?
Dazed and confused
Theo

Reply works, but address book entry doesn't

I have an odd problem that's making me a litttle batty. I have an friend I e-mail regularly and--since recently switching to Mail from Eudora--I've been finding that some of my messages are not getting through.
I'm not 100% certain, but it seems that when I send a new message that's addressed from the Address Book entry, the message is never received. But when I REPLY to a message from this same recipient--same address--the message goes through just fine.
I've reviewed the address again and again and it's entered correctly.
When I look at the Long Header, one difference I note between the received and no-received maessages is under Content-Type.
A successful message has:
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=Apple-Mail-8-603300258
And a failed message:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Another difference is that the failed messages--the ones that originated with me have something called:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
While the messages I reply to don't have that line at all.
The recipient--by the way--is at work at a large organization. So I wonder if their mail servers are blocking messages with certain kinds of encoding?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
OK, OK...this just in. While I was composing this message, I was also franticly corresponding with the adressee in question, trying to troubleshoot this. I may have solved my own problem, but I'm going to post this anyway... In hopes of solving someone else's problem, and possibly getting some responses that will enlighten me further (cuz I just don't get this).
On a wild guess/hunch, I went into PREFERENCES/COMPOSING and changed the Message Format: from Rich Text to Plain Text. The next test message got through! One difference (if it matters??) I found in the Long Header was the
Content-Type changed from:
text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
to
text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
So anyway...I'm completely flummoxed. Any ideas, clues, answers out there? I'm not going to trust yet that this problem is completely solved. So I'll leave this as an open question for now.
verbosely yours,
Roger
Mac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Hmmm... there's nothing fancy about the signature (no bolds, itals or other styles or colors). But does that mean that it IS plain text? My setting when I made the signature(s) was Rich Text, I'm sure. So would that apply, even though it's plain for all intents and purposes? And if it's not. How is it changed to Plain Text?
As far as the SMTP settings. I tried one change last night. I changed the Server settings from "smtp.ispname.net:username" to "smtp.ispname.net:[email protected]". When I tested a message to the address/server I've had the most problems with, the message arrived successfully. But I don't think that proves anything as yet. The nature of the problem has been mysteriously intermitent anyway. (that message had my regular signature as well).
AS I'd mentioned, I've been moving stuff out of my Sent Mail folders to keep things organized and for reference (Is doing that OK? is Sent Mail suppposed to be left wher it is for some reason?). But on informal investigation, I would say that all of the messages I've sent--original or reply--HAVE shown up in the Sent Mail folder.
The discussion thread I'd been involved in with you before is:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=347863
However, I haven't added any posts since way back then.
Thanks you for any insights you can give me with this. If you're not on Apple's payroll, you should be.
Roger

Batch edit Address Book entries

Does anyone know of a way to change a number of address book entries at the same time?
Say, for example, You move offices. Now you need to change the work address for 150 people... how would you go about doing that?

Applescript.
Here for example is one that changes a load of email addresses. You would use something similar for changing postal addresses.
AK
click here to open this script in your editor<pre style="font-family: 'Monaco', 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; overflow:auto; color: #222; background: #DDD; padding: 0.2em; font-size: 10px; width:400px">tell application "Address Book"
(* Change Domain Name of emails in Address Book *)
(* AK Aug 2005 *)
set OldPart to "xyz" --<<<<< change here
set NewPart to "tuv" --<<<<< change here
set {OldDelim, text item delimiters} to {text item delimiters, "@" & OldPart & "."}
set TheList to every person
repeat with One in TheList
set MailList to every email of One
repeat with OneMail in MailList
set Bits to text items of ((value of OneMail) as text)
if (count of Bits) > 1 then
set NewValue to item 1 of Bits & "@" & NewPart & "." & item 2 of Bits
display dialog ((value of OneMail) as text) & return & NewValue
-- set value of OneMail to NewValue
end if
end repeat
end repeat
set text item delimiters to OldDelim
end tell</pre>

Editing multiple address book entries

I'm trying to update the "Company" field with the same value on dozens of Address Book entries at the same time. Having no luck. Anyone know how to update these all at once?

I am attempting to do the exact same thing - did you ever find a resolution to this problem?

Address Book entries deleted... then reappear!

When I connect my address book to MobileMe, I am finding certain rogue address book entries that I want to change or delete, but they never retain the changes for very long.
I delete or edit, sync to MobileMe righ away, and see the change correctly on both MobileMe, iPhone, and computer. Then, the next day or two, it randomly shows up again with the old data.
I even tried resetting the sync data with the address book, to no avail.
Any suggestions?

I would try to connect to mobile me on your "master" device. The one that is most correct. Reset all mobile me services, and have your computer replace the contents on mobile me. Then I would disable and re-enable each of the other devices. That way it completely clears out mobile me, and then sets up each device again.

"FROM" shows email address, not name, for a few address book entries

What is strange is that for the people it happens to, Mail IS able to successfully cross-reference them to an address book entry by showing their real name (and photo if I have one), in the BODY of the message. In other words, Mail will always resolved email address into names in the body of mail messages (100% of the time if I have a matching address book entry), but will only show names rather than addresses in the list view maybe 85% of the time. Weird. Seems like mail should either know the sender and display a name instead of address, or not. My issue is that is knows them in the body but doesn't in the messages list (above the preview pane).
I can't figure out what about the address book card for these few people is any different from the others one which do the name matching perfectly every time.
A small concern here, I know, but it is very annoying that I can't figure this out. I first noticed it back with Mail for Tiger. Any ideas?

Brent W. wrote:
It is easy to prove. Create an address book card for a sender already in your Inbox, give this new address card a fake name, and the Mail app will substitute the fake name in the "From:" field of the email message.
you are right. It is easy to prove and Mail doesn't do anything of the sort when i try it. On the other hand if I change the From field when composing a message, any recipient (using mail or any other email client) will see that name. that name is sent with the message and you can see it if you view the raw source of the message. Mail certainly never changes raw source.

Adress Book Groups in IOS 6

Why Apple developper's remove the old way of selecting and finding a contact inside groups !!
it is a nightmare now , i have more than 1200 contacts and how can i find someone inside the new way of working ?
how it's possible someone at Apple decide this unproductive way of working !
now i need to deselect all the contact and select the group i want to see in, an then enter inside that group !
and if i want to switch back to an other group i need to undo and redo this selection.
Seriously is it a beginner who decide this kind of functionnalities ????
And there is a Senior something that let this append on the market ???
Steve Jobs will never let do such a pain to use intrerface !!!
They change the mistake they make inside Lion with adress book, and now they make it worst inside IOS 6 !

Yes this *****. Why is this the only reply? Let me make this clear if "features" like this become common Apple will lose it; How in the world did this even make it into IOS 6? Jobs would have rained down profanities on the "genius" who let this through. It ***** it ***** it *****! Get rid of it now. I know this sounds stupid but I feel betrayed here, this is a moronic move ala Microsoft. I can't believe this. I really am outraged; in this case Apple is not hungry only foolish.
Message was edited by: Bonton33

Bug in the application "Adress Book" in Mac OS X 10.5.6.

Hello,
there is a bug in the application "Adress Book" in Mac OS X 10.5.6.. If you create a new card/kontact in "Adress Book" in Mac OS X 10.5.6., fill out the adress fields (zip code, city/region and country) but do not fill out the field "zip code" and click the button "edit" to finish the entry there will be a blank too much pre the field "town" in the finished outlook of the card in "Adress Book" in Mac OS X 10.5.6..
DocHollywood
Message was edited by: DocHollywood
Message was edited by: DocHollywood
Message was edited by: DocHollywood
Message was edited by: DocHollywood

DocHollywood,
I'm afraid I don't experience the bug you have found. I wonder if it is Specific to your region. You should submit a bug report to apple in the following link: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
I hope that helps,
Weston

Changing multipel Adress Book entries at once?

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