Outlook Contacts shows weird behaviour for certain contact names

[Mary]

Someone that I used to work with pointed out a strange quirk in Outlook. I
create a new contact in Outlook, by going into the contacts view, clicking
on the "New" icon (not the accompanying dropdown, just the "New"), and type
the name directly into the Name field. Usually, once I enter the name and
hit tab or enter, some suggestion appeared in the File As field (First Last;
Last, First; etc.). But for some reason, when I follow this method and type
"XXX Eng" into the Name field, a suggestion does not automatically appear in
the File As field. This can be any first name along with the last name
Eng -- John Eng, Joe Eng, Susie Eng, etc. When I hit Save and Close, the
following warning appears: "The File As Field for this contact is empty. You
may not have entered a name or company. Do you want to save this contact
with an empty File As field."

I figured that Outlook just has a problem with short surnames -- those with
three letters or less. But that is not the case for any that I've tried
right down to single-character first name followed by single-character last
name. It successfully rearranged any that I entered in the File as field. So
what is it about the last name Eng that it doesn't treat it like all the
others? By the way, it doesn't lik the first name Eng either. Eng Smith
shows up in the File as field as simply Smith.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Someone that I used to work with pointed out a strange quirk in
Outlook. I create a new contact in Outlook, by going into the
contacts view, clicking on the "New" icon (not the accompanying
dropdown, just the "New"), and type the name directly into the Name
field. Usually, once I enter the name and hit tab or enter, some
suggestion appeared in the File As field (First Last; Last, First;
etc.). But for some reason, when I follow this method and type "XXX
Eng" into the Name field, a suggestion does not automatically appear
in the File As field.

There are certain built-in strings that cause Outlook to behave this way.
Outlook is assuming the last name is really a title. Other last names that
behave this way have been documented in thie newsgroup in other posts. Your
only work around is to use the individual name fields.

 

[Mary]

Thank you, Brian. I did a search and found that someone had asked exactly
the same question before. For anyone else who is bamboozled by this
behaviour, see
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...e8cf0ae4420?lnk=st&q=&rnum=1#e7a49e8cf0ae4420.