Printing mailing labels from address book including spouses name

Sandra Foster wrote:
I agree — very ugly. That KB article also says:

+In Mac OS X 10.6 or later, Address Book will print the prefix, suffix, first, middle, and last names that appear in the card being printed, but none of the related names will be printed on mailing labels or envelopes.+

They seem — with this sentence — to be giving up completely on the possibility of printing labels with more than one name. :S

I agree, but in the meantime the workaround posted by ElectroLund on page 3 of this thread seems to work well. No telling if it will continue to work after the next Address Book update, though.

alannie wrote:

I agree, but in the meantime the workaround posted by ElectroLund on page 3 of this thread seems to work well. No telling if it will continue to work after the next Address Book update, though.

Just discovered a caveat of the workaround - addresses that are updated using the autodetect technology in Mail (where a dotted line appears around the address and you're able to select options to add to a new or existing contact) no longer work.

To get this functionality back I made a backup copy of the ABRelatedNamesConfig.plist file and deleted it from the Reources folder.

Nope, can't get it to work. Don't have 10.5 lying around, so tried to create the plist as per the instructions - and changed the country code to gb as I'm in the UK.

I do however, have machine upstairs running 10.4. Can anybody direct me to where I can find the file that I can perhaps pull across to me 10.6 Address Book package?

This is a really dump scenario. Can it really be that difficult to do? Having said that, and reading through this and other threads, Apple never really cracked the whole multiple names on one address label thing, so chances are they've just given up on it to concentrate on the next big thing. Man, Christmas cards made out of paper are so last year. We should all be sending iPhone to iPhone seasonal greetings to each other - all your friends and relatives have an iPhone, right?

I hate address book. There is nothing about it that makes it better than anything on Windows. It doesn't "just work". It is an epic fail.

Why?

Every year I have to go through the agony of Christmas cards and the sheer stupidity of trying to make this work. So now on my iphone, my friends all appear as "The X Family" or whatever they are.

Five years ago when I switched, I simply took my Windows addresses and told the computer WHICH FIELDS I wanted printed on the address labels in something known as a MAIL MERGE to labels.

It took all of about 15 minutes and I was done.

I would also like to know why my address book insists on duplicating my entire address book about once every two years for no reason whatsoever. I am then forced to go through and mangle my entire list.

I'm not joking when I say this entire experience causes me every single year to check out the Windows world to see what I am missing and it is looking sweeter and sweeter because I HATE THE ADDRESS BOOK!

I don't understand why everyone is so concerned about this "feature" going away. To me it's just a bug. I'm still running Leopard, and when I try to print my address labels it puts not just the spouse, but children's names on the first line, after the parent's name. But it only puts one or two of the children if there are three or more. It seems rather random. I'd be ok with the spouse's name being added, but it looks strange with the children's names. I don't want it to do this, so I guess I'll upgrade to Snow Leopard where this bug is fixed! If it is going to print related names on the card, it should let you select which types you want added (if any), i.e. spouse, child, partner, assistant, etc.

It worked!!! I have my full labels back. Thank you for tip and the clarification. This is one the best threads of ALL time.

Maggi33 wrote:
I don't understand why everyone is so concerned about this "feature" going away. To me it's just a bug.

Then, with respect, you clearly know know how the terms "feature" and "bug" are used in software development. A feature is deliberate, where a bug is an accidental oversight.

The spouse printing in Address Book pre-Snow Leopard is most definitely a feature as Apple have a knowledge base article explaining how it works. I contains certain limitations that could be described as "bugs", but the feature itself is not a bug.

I'm still running Leopard, and when I try to print my address labels it puts not just the spouse, but children's names on the first line, after the parent's name. But it only puts one or two of the children if there are three or more. It seems rather random. I'd be ok with the spouse's name being added, but it looks strange with the children's names. I don't want it to do this, so I guess I'll upgrade to Snow Leopard where this bug is fixed! If it is going to print related names on the card, it should let you select which types you want added (if any), i.e. spouse, child, partner, assistant, etc.

The bugs in the spouse printing haven't been fixed, instead the feature itself has been completely removed. Now if you want to print related names, you have to store them in the First/Last Name fields of the contact, e.g.

First name: John & Jane
Last Name: Doe & Family

or:

First name: John, Jane, Joe and Janet
Last Name: Doe