The Entourage User's WebLog

Microsoft Outlook (on the PC) allows uses to list their address book by "Last Name, First Name" order (much like a telephone directory). Many users are familiar with this layout and comment on Entourage's inability to sort contacts in this order. Such comments are, strictly speaking, incorrect. Entourage does sort contacts in this order when you click on the 'Name' column in the address book listing. The confusion arises because Entourage displays the names in "First Name, Last Name" format, so the sort order is not always immediately apparent.

However, there is now a solution. Go to the My Scripts page and download the "Last Name - First Name" script (it's at the bottom of the page). Run this script, and one of the spare custom fields in the Entourage Address Book will be populated with a copy of the contact's name in 'last Name, First Name' format.

You can set the Address Book to display this field in the contact listing by control clicking (right-clicking) on the column headers and selecting field 'Custom 8' to make it display. This field can then be dragged to the left hand side of the column listing and can even replace the 'Name' column if you deselect that column.

Filling this column only happens when the script is run. It won't happen automatically when a contact is added or edited. So, for best results, set a schedule in entourage to run the script once a week, once a day or even once an hour! It all depends how often you add or edit your contacts, and how 'up to date' you want to be.

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Schedule to run the script

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Update 4th Feb 2006: I just updated the script to v2.0.2 to remove a couple of silly bugs.

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