How do you sort contacts by last name?

[Jim White]

I imported my contacts from Outlook Express. Now using Windows Mail. I would
like to have my contacts listed by last name... but I cannot find out how to
list my contacts by last name. I would appreciate help and instruction.
Thanks,

 

[Keith Miller MVP]

If you're composing a new e-mail & using the 'Select Recipients' dialog,
clicking the sort arrow in the 'Name' header cycles thru FOUR options:

FullName ascending
FullName descending
Last, First ascending
Last, First descending

If a contact has a FullName/filename of 'LastName, FirstName', there is no
apparent difference. But if you allow the default FullName contruction of
'FirstName LastName', or if you edit FullName to be some arbitrary text, the
difference becomes apparent.

In terms of viewing the Contacts folder, the filename is governed by
'FullName' field of the Contact -- & the Contact Properites dialog
constructs 'FullName' as 'First Last' by default. If you click the
drop-list for the 'FullName' field, You are given 3 default contructions:

First Last
Last First
Last, First

If you don't mind editing contacts one-by-one, you can do it that way. I'm
working on a script to do batch renames -- a basic version should be ready
shortly.

 

[Ed]

There may be a faster way but I did it this way.

Open each contact and where you typed the last name, click the down arrow
and select the last one.

It takes time, if you have a large list of contacts, but it works.

Good luck,
Ed

 

[Mickey Segal]

You can also add a last name heading in the contacts folder and sort by
that, but strangely this sorting takes a huge amount of time - over a minute
on many systems with >1000 contacts, with the sorting always starting out as
determined by the filename until the minute is over. The time needed to
sort 1000 last name strings should be at most a few milliseconds.

It is much faster to leave the bizarre default of sorting by first name and
just use the search box.

There is something very poorly designed about the new contacts system -
there are also long delays when searching for a name typed into a mail
message recipient field.

In general, the biggest step backwards in Vista is slowness of file
operations, and the slowness of the contacts files is the most extreme that
I've found. Fortunately there are other benefits in Vista.

 

[DGuess]

If you don't mind editing contacts one-by-one, you can do it that way.
I'm working on a script to do batch renames -- a basic version should be
ready shortly.

Was going to say it would be easier to program it since the file is just a
text XML file.

 

[AMT]

Keith - Is the script to do a batch rename of contacts to change the name
display to last,first available? Or, is there a way to set default
preferences to last,first for name display for all new contacts?