Printing mailing labels from address book including spouses name

Apparently Apple no longer believes in Christmas (cards).

Anybody have any suggestions as to a Snow-Leopard-compatible envelope and address printing application that can take its input from Address Book and provides spouse name printing? I'd planned to print my Christmas cards this weekend and now I'm screwed along with the others. Humbug!

Is anybody at Apple listening? Can posts from this usergroup be sent to Apple directly. Does anybody know how to influence these decisions???

Helpful hints on BUG reporting would be useful here. This is an ISSUE with SNOW Leopard. I can't imagine some software engineer somewhere thinking "oh yeah, let's ditch this really useful element." "It just works" is quickly becoming "It'll only work until the next update." I chose MAC because it was not riddled with the giant, sucking, bad decisions that Windows has.

This may seem like a minor issue, but for a system that touts ease of use these backward steps are really aggravating.

I am new to apple and like my macbook pro, for the most part, but things like this are extremely aggravating.

Even if this feature worked in Snow Leopard like it worked in past OS X versions, it would be bad. For example, my friend Silex McGillicutty is in my iPhone, but I don't have his wife's contact information in my iphone or on my computer. I do have her name, Henrietta McGillicutty in the "spouse" field of Address Book. I should be able to print out a label that says Silex and Henrietta regardless of whether or not I have an contact in my address book for Henrietta. I don't need Henrietta in my iphone.

To get around this, I had to change the first names for my friends to Friend and Spouse. Now, in my iphone or anywhere in my macbook pro when I email someone or deal with their address book entry, I see Friend and Spouse. This is all because I was in charge of making my address labels. Now I could go back and remove "and Spouse" from all the contacts, but I'll have to add them in next Christmas.

The Windows dude in all of the commercials would have a field day with this insanity.

It would be very nice if this label feature of Address Book was improved upon.

VERY FRUSTRATING

nsnewbie wrote:
Does anybody know how to influence these decisions???

Sure:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

I understand this is supposed to work in Leopard. But I export my Snow Leopard contacts to a Leopard machine, and no dice! They are still messed up. I have to delete and re-do. Worse yet, I just did a merge and cleanup with my wife's addresses, and so it messed hers up (she's still on Leopard).

Is there any workaround AT LEAST for someone to export their data to a Leopard machine and get it to work? Are we doomed to redo our entire contact lists? Christmas is just a few weeks away!!!

I, too, am extremely frustrated with the inability to print spouse/partners from Address Book. I did find a (temporary) work around and wanted to share it: SoHo labels: http://www.chronosnet.com/Products/soholabels.html . It has a free trial for 30 days, so it will at least get me through my Holiday Cards, but I don't think it is all that expensive. And, it was super easy to add the "spouse" field - Click on the 'design' tab, then click the down arrow next to 'delivery address'. One of the options is 'Name and spouse'. (And, this won't print the child names on the label, which I disliked about the old options with Address Book.) Hope this helps!

I was trying to print our Christmas letters and now I don't get spouse names on my printing labels anymore. I found this thread after a little searching.

I would be very upset if Apple decided to removed this feature. Is there a place to vote on features for applications? I intended to report feedback here http://www.apple.com/feedback/ but I don't even see Address Book on the list.

How can I tell if this is a bug or a feature that was removed?

As I stated earlier, I spoke with an Applecare senior representative who told me this feature was removed with the introduction of Snow Leopard.

This problem is related to Mac OS X. I gave Apple feedback asking that this feature be re-installed in Snow Leopard. Hopefully, others will do the same.

Message was edited by: Longknife23

I take back my comment about this being a work around. The trial version actually prints out "trial" in the background of the labels (how obnoxious), and I'm not willing to purchase the software because it doesn't deal well with couples with different last names. (i.e. If it is Mary A and her spouse Richard B it becomes Mary and Richard B A.) Ugh!!!

This was really a STUPID move on Apple's part. They should improve the product by making it possible to use any field(s) we want. Instead, Apple removes a feature that I rely on every year, which was already too limiting. I have many people who are married but have different last names and I have never been able correctly send them an envelope with both names.

Based on other posts, I am going to see if I can move my address list to my older mac. What a pain!!!!!!

Well that didn't work. The only group that either was not exported or was not imported was my Christmas List. GRRRR!

The whole address book programming needs to be cleaned up. Taking out the spouse in Snow Leopard was just an easy out for them. I'm running Leopard and I can't get it to print the spouse's name if there is another card out there with the same first name! How stupid is that. So the only way is to have two cards for every couple with the same address.

This doesn't "just work"

Having some difficulty with Address Book using OSX 5.8 and spouses names not printing. I've created a new card with the spouses name and same address then merged the cards. Deleted the second address and any additional info not needed and it worked. The other remedy I tried was just switching the First name with the Spouses name and that has sometimes worked.

I think I may have found a fix inspired by on an old hint on MacOSXHints.com. So far it seems to work.

1) I grabbed a copy of the 10.5 Address Book from another computer.

2) I drilled into the package (right-click, Show Package Contents) and grabbed this file: Address Book.app/Contents/Resources/ABRelatedNamesConfig.plist

3) I made a backup of both the 10.6 Address Book and my data.

4) I then put a copy of the above plist file into the same corresponding directory inside the 10.6 Address Book package.

That's it! My first label test seemed to work. Good luck, everyone. This MIGHT be the answer.