Invitee email addresses come up wrong when typed in

Question

When I am trying to add invitees to a meeting on iCal, I type in the first few letters of their name or email and something entirely different comes up, as if
it does not recognize I am typing an "a", it comes begins to list email addresses in the "t's", for example.  Happens when any combination of letter

Answer 1

Oh yes we always have options.
Before we go any further, does this behavior only occur with specific names / email addresses?  If so you may have more than one addressbook card in addresssbook with a similar name / email address and one of them may have a misspelling.  Try typing in the misspelling that keeps showing up in the iCal Invitee field into the Addressbook search field to see if maybe there is a card with a misspelling (in which case correct it or delete the card in question if it is a duplicate).
If that isn't it then:
Reset sync services: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1627 and restart the computer.
If that isn't it then:
1.) Go into Addressbook
2.) If you have groups created click on each group 1 at a time and go to File > Export > Group vCard for each group saving them to a logical location.  Do this for the "All Contacts" group as well.
3.) Make an addition backup of Addressbook by going to File > Export > Addressbook Archive
4.) Click on "All contacts" and then click on one of the contacts listed to the right (doesn't matter which one)
5.) Go to Edit > Select All to highlight all contacts
6.) Go to Edit > Delete Cards (which deletes all your addressbook entries which is why we made a backup)
7.) Restart the computer
8.) Launch Addressbook and ensure it is still blank and Add a new card with an email address and name
9.) Go to iCal and add an event with an invitee and try typing in the name / email address as you would do normally and see if it correctly recognizes the 1 addressbook card you have in addressbook.
--- If this works then we know that you have an issue with 1 or more of the addressbook cards that were formerly in the Addressbook program.  Try re-importing the vCards created in step #2 and see if the issue re-occurs (hopefully it won't as sometimes exporting / importing fixes odd issues with databases).