Contacts / Address Book / My head!

[tcv]

Hey folks,

I apologize up front. I am sure I am going to ask something that's been
exactly 100 billion times before but, try as I might, I simply haven't
been able to get my head around how the Outlook Address Book displays
contacts and, more importantly, how to fix a problem.

Here's what I see.

I have a contact. His name is Joe Blow. No, seriously. I want him to
display in the Address Book as "Blow, Joe."

The Contact Fields show:

1. His Full Name is "Blow, Joe."
2. His File As is "Blow, Joe."
3. His Display As is "Blow, Joe."
4. Default File As order (for new contacts) is Last, First
5. The Outlook Address Book is set to "Show names by" to "File As
(Smith, John).

And yet good ol' Joe Blow, my friend, my colleague, continues to show in
the Outlook Address Book (when you click the TO: button of a new email)
as "Joe Blow."

Sigh.

So, I have hundreds of these contacts. Sone of them show up properly in
the OAB. Some of them don't. I want to fix them all, but I can't even
fix this one.

Please, please tell me now. Is there something I should know? Is there
something I should say? That would makes contacts display the proper
way? (Apologies to Duran Duran.)

Cheers,

Mike Whalen

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Make sure you have parsed the individual name elements correctly rather than
using the Full Name field. Make sure you have restarted Outlook after making
your settings.