Edit Multiple State Abbreviations in Contact Card

Question

I am using Address Book to populate envelopes to print from a contact list of 890 contacts.
I have the addresses imported, and everything looks good EXCEPT the information imported with the state abbreviation in Xx format (uppercase lowercase). I would like it to be standard for USPS and be XX (uppercase uppercase).
Here's what I mean -
Currently looks like this: My Name
123 Street Name
St. Paul, Mn 55102
and I want it to look like this :My Name
123 Street Name
St. Paul, MN 55102
Is there anyway to do a batch edit to set the "State" field to caps, or both uppercase letters? I have exhausted myself getting this sheet set up and finally imported and have no energy left to keep researching how to do this (the file I was supplied with was a mess!). I do have my preferences set to United States for the Address Format, and I did not see any way to do this in the Templates.
I would really appreciate some advice on this!
Thanks so much!
Stef

Answer 1

hi stef,
I have two recommendations, but neither is a complete solution, just a path to start down...
(1) I'd ask the same question in applescript forums here on the apple discussions site. I've had plenty of good input from folks over there. being that AB is an apple app, I'm almost positive that it's scriptable. if that is truly the case, then you just need to find the syntax to scour your AB db file, and change the entries related to states. I wouldn't be surprised if someone has already created it and if it's not available via someone pointing you to it from this forum, I'd just do a bunch of google searches refining your query to get better results. at the very least, you'll find plenty of applescript gurus to ask about it, or perhaps get them to create a little script for you if they're feeling generous. most of the people on the forums are, unless they're only here for help for themselves (which plenty are).
(2) if you have a good text editor (which technically you do in plain old TextEdit), you can export all of your contacts to a big vcf file and do a bunch of find/replace runs on the state entry for each item listed. it's not as pretty, but might get you done quicker than taking the time to find someone to help edit it within AB. the concern I would have would be if the groups that you use will be retained when the file was re-imported back into AB, as you'd delete all the other contacts first before bringing these new ones back in.
as always, back up your data first (if you have time machine running, you should be fine as long as you run an extra backup just before you begin to experiment), and sometimes I just do a quick and dirty protection option by duplicating the file that I'm going to play with (while in place) and then zip up the backup copy just in case.
if I get some more time later today, I'll try to grab my own file and check the syntax to help you determine what to find/replace if you go that route. I'd need some help on the applescript option so I'm not much help there. I'd try that forum first though, as it could be a rather helpful script to share with eh rest of us if you do get it.
cheers,
- jeremy