Printing mailing labels from address book including spouses name

I just printed my holiday labels and can confirm that the above fix works. Everything now seems to be working just like it did in 10.5.

If anyone's interested, here's the old tip (2005) on MacOSXHints.com that inspired the solution:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20051221232010333&query=addressbookspouse

A simple solution would be to have something like a "Salutation" field that you can use for printing.
So normally you have "John Smith" as the name in the contact list, but the 'Salutation' is: "The Smith Family". Then choose it as an option on the print dialog to substitute the salutation instead of using the name.

I've provided this feedback to apple for 3 years running... (this will be the 4th)
but unfortunately there hasn't been much improvement in the address book.

If I didn't make it clear on my original post, the 'Salutation' feature doesn't exist, it was just a suggestion.

AWESOME Workaround! Thanks so much! And thank God for Time Machine saving the old Mail app! As is the opinion of all on this post; it shouldn't have been this way, but it's great to know there's folks out there smart enough (and determined enough) to make something work!

I hope the "pros" at Apple are listening in and change their tune on fixing and improving Mail. I still wouldn't go back to PC, but this bug has been really frustrating...

Thanks again!

Steve Rhyne wrote:
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

If it's just a plist file, then surely someone can run a diff between the 10.5 and 10.6 versions and tell us the magic properties we have to set? Or have I misunderstood plist files?

Unfortunately, not all of us have access to a machine running 10.5 😟

That plist file doesn't exist inside the 10.6 Address Book application package. That's why you have to grab a copy from the older 10.5 Address Book application package. If you still have a 10.5 install disc laying around, you could try using a utility like Pacifist to extract a copy of Address Book from it. Good luck!

Steve Rhyne wrote:
That plist file doesn't exist inside the 10.6 Address Book application package. That's why you have to grab a copy from the older 10.5 Address Book application package. If you still have a 10.5 install disc laying around, you could try using a utility like Pacifist to extract a copy of Address Book from it. Good luck!

Hmm... did that, but it unfortunately did not fix the problem; spouse names still do not get printed.

I found that combing Address Book with iWork gave more flexibility in terms of printing the envelopes in a more customized way. Use Pages.

First Create an address book group for your Christmas labels-

In Pages, there are about 15 envelope templates from which you can select. I selected one and saved it as "Family template." Then added three lines to the address:
"The LAST NAME Family"
"ADDRESS"
"CITY, STATE ZIP" you can also add spouse (it is under related names)

Each of the ALL CAPS words (or phrases) can be very easily linked to an Address Book field through the iWork Inspector by highlighting the text then opening the Inspector, clicking on the icon that looks like a blue circle with a white arrow, selecting the "Merge" button, clicking to put a check mark in the check box that says "Enable as an Address Book Field" then selecting the appropriate fields from the drop down options.

Then, under the Pages Edit menu select "Mail Merge" and select your Christmas address group. That automatically creates an envelope for each family in that group in a separate iWork document. We then scan the document before printing for instances where we want or need to tweak what will be printed.

This method is extremely flexible! I decided to organize my address book by using the nickname field in address book for my family address title. (Ex. The Cool Family)

Then, instead of a first and last name field in the envelope template, i put in nickname for the field instead.

"Nickname"
"ADDRESS"
"CITY, STATE ZIP"

Hope this helps.....

I found that combing Address Book with iWork gave more flexibility in terms of printing the envelopes in a more customized way. Use Pages.

First Create an address book group for your Christmas labels-

In Pages, there are about 15 envelope templates from which you can select. I selected one and saved it as "Family template." Then added three lines to the address:
"The LAST NAME Family"
"ADDRESS"
"CITY, STATE ZIP" you can also add spouse (it is under related names)

Each of the ALL CAPS words (or phrases) can be very easily linked to an Address Book field through the iWork Inspector by highlighting the text then opening the Inspector, clicking on the icon that looks like a blue circle with a white arrow, selecting the "Merge" button, clicking to put a check mark in the check box that says "Enable as an Address Book Field" then selecting the appropriate fields from the drop down options.

Then, under the Pages Edit menu select "Mail Merge" and select your Christmas address group. That automatically creates an envelope for each family in that group in a separate iWork document. We then scan the document before printing for instances where we want or need to tweak what will be printed.

This method is extremely flexible! I decided to organize my address book by using the nickname field in address book for my family address title. (Ex. The Cool Family)

Then, instead of a first and last name field in the envelope template, i put in nickname for the field instead.

"Nickname"
"ADDRESS"
"CITY, STATE ZIP"

Hope this helps.....

I've been on the phone with Apple Support regarding this for 30 minutes. I've been so clear about the issue, and repeated myself so many times, I have to conclude they have been instructed to feign ignorance. The tech told me to download Label Maker Pro, but I don't see how this solves anything. The guy finally determined that what we consider to be an error is actually "expected behavior" and that nobody is working on changing it. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! I will not buy my holiday cards via iPhoto again.

This is crazy. Address Book has always been a bit, er, quirky. My contacts have been dead since the first attempt to sync Outlook and Address book across Mobile Me (which resulted in lost contacts and 8 hours on phone support o Apple, and still no Contacts... oh yes).

However I have tried to re-build my Christmas Card list on Address Book. I too have this same trouble. It just shouldn't be like this.

I've submitted bug report to Apple - Bug ID# 7472296. We'll see if anything comes of it.

Wow!!! I am quite impressed with this workaround (hack). Worked very nicely.

I too am on Snow Leopard and can confirm Apple’s decision to cripple this feature of printing spouse’s names on envelopes. But to bring back this feature on your Snow Leopard Address Book, just follow these steps:

1) If you don’t have a 10.5 plist file, make your own. Copy the code below into a UTF-8 text editor (I prefer TextWrangler):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>ca</key>
<true/>
<key>uk</key>
<true/>
<key>us</key>
<true/>
<key>fr</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

2) Save that as “ABRelatedNamesConfig.plist”

3) Copy that file to:

/Applications/Address Book.app/Contents/Resources/

4) Prep your contacts so that the Spouse - Name entry is the full name. For instance, for a contact named John Doe, the Spouse field should read “Jane Doe” and then the printed label for John will read "John and Jane Doe"

I tried the above process from ElectroLund and it worked great. There are a couple points of clarification that may help.

After creating the "ABRelatedNamesConfig.plist" file, open the Applications folder and right-click on "Address Book." Select "Show Package Contents." Open the "Contents" folder and put the "ABRelatedNamesConfig.plist" file in the "Resources" folder. You'll probably get a message that says "The item "ABRelatedNamesConfig.plist" cannot be moved because "Resources" can't be modified." Click on "Authenticate" and then enter your admin user name and password.

Jay

Thanks for your help, Jay. Clarification is always a good thing!

Good luck to everyone out there struggling with this.

Nobodyknowsimadog wrote:
I've been on the phone with Apple Support regarding this for 30 minutes. I've been so clear about the issue, and repeated myself so many times, I have to conclude they have been instructed to feign ignorance. The tech told me to download Label Maker Pro, but I don't see how this solves anything.

Tried Label Maker Professional, but it wanted me to install Rosetta, which instantly disqualifies it from my computer.