Previous Recipient Address Book integration problem

Question

does anyone know how to add a "Previous Recipient" beyond simply seleccting the contact and checking the box to add?
for instance, how and when does this sync take place? i have closed out of each of these softwares after adding a contact and i am not seeing the sync take place.
also if i have a contact in Mail's Previous Recipients (which has an email address) and I have the same contact in my Address Book (which has a phone number) is there a good way to get these two to MERGE instead of creating two contacts?
TIA

Answer 1

> You will see the Previous Recipients list and AB list in Mail will change to First-Last name view.
You are referring here to getting the SORT ORDER to change? I mean, you are indicating that if I change preferences for sort order - well - it did not appear to change anything in an /existing/ linked contact from Mail but you are saying that i need to close and restart AB to get the new sort to take effect before relinking more contacts from Mail...?
Not sort order, view order of First Name before Last. In order for the Previous Recipients list to change in Mail, you need to quit Mail (not AB) and reopen it. It will then change the list view to First-Last name view. Sort order remains sorted by Last name. If you want the sort order by first name, you can do that too.
> In a message window, most email addresses show first name & then last name. If you are viewing last name first, then it gets put backward in AB and won't match an existing contact. I have tried it an got the name added to show the correct order in AB.
OK, but i am doing something wrong here then because all my combinations cause imported Mail contacts to show up as Last Name - First Name when i have sorted by First Name - Last Name and vice versa if I changed settings in AB preferences...
Change the view order to First-Last name in AB (not sort order). If you are importing contacts from a different source, then I guess that would depend on how it's information is saved. If you are importing from mail messages ((note that I'm referring to how incoming messages are recieved), then the view order (First-Last) is what usually gets sent from people when a name is tagged to it. When adding an address from a mail message, Mail recognizes the name in the header field as First-Last and that's how they get saved to AB. If your view in AB is Last-First displayed, then it gets put in backwards.
As I said, set the viewing order in AB to First Name before last name. Quit Mail and reopen Mail. Your previous recipient list in Mail should change to show First-Last name. Sort order will depend on setting in AB.
> Names must be the same for it to recognize as a duplicate.
OK, presumably this also includes capitalizations? Anyway, i am doing something wrong because i don't get the first and last order sorted correctly under anything i am doing.
I'm not sure about capatilization, but "Tom Test" does not equal "Thomas Test", or "Tom Test" does not equal "Test Tom".
> If the name already exists in AB, the drop down list in a messages address window will change to "add to contact" (where it will just add that address to the contact).
OK, so you are referring here to an option to add a contact (i guess we are only adding the email in this case if the contact is already in AB...?) when doing an entry in a Mail Message - which is different from ADDING CONTACT from the Previous Recipients list?
Yes. If the contact exists and let's say you recieve a message from them using a different email address, you will have the option in the dropdown to add the address to the existing contact instead of creating a new one.
The previous recipients list is a database file and I don't believe you can directly import from it. It isn't stored as VCards like the AB data is.
Only thing I can suggest is to play with it and see if you can get it to work for you. Getting it to import the name order to match correctly in AB would be a big step to resolving duplicates. Even if the names don't match exactly and they don't get merged, it would be much easier to spot in a list where the names are close together. If the Last name and First get reversed on the import, then the names will not show close in the list and will be hard to spot.
I think this is a problem trying to get addresses from different sources no matter which application you use.
I wish Mail has a setting to display names differently than AB. I like AB sorted and viewed by Last Name. But I would like my messages displayed in Mail headers as first name when sending or recieving. You don't have any control on addresses that aren't in the AB on how the name tags come in. But as I said, addresses not in AB will generally be displayed First-Last name (providing they have names tagged to it).
I haven't played with this much and things sometimes change with OS upgrades. I usually add a contact manually. If I add from a message, I usually imediately go to AB and fix the names then to make sure it's correct.
Play with it and I just hope it works out for you. Never said it would be easy or flawless.