Q: Alphabetical sorting of groups in address book

It has been discussed at least several times.

When you add a contact to the Address Book it is given a unique identifier; if interested, you can see them in the Metadata folder of Applcation Support/Address Book in your Library. I think the order of names of a group in the To field is alphabetic on the UUID.  I've looked a couple of times and that has been the order. I doubt that Apple has any intention of changing this - but you never know.

While I find it difficult to understand why anyone cares, I have two suggestions. First, in Mail's Composing Preferences, you could turn off "When sending to a group show all member address". That way none of the recipients will know that they are not first - but they will see the group name, so don't choose a derogatory one. Second, just put the group in the Bcc field. You can either leave the To field blank or put your own address in it.

Particularly with large groups you should be doing one of these anyway, as not everyone in a group might want to share their address with everyone else.

I agree this is puzzling. I send emails to many people in a couple of groups put together by interest. When I select a group to email, I type in the group name and there are the addresses.....but not alphabetized. I then go through the list to delete people out of the group that I don't want to send the email to.....for example if one of people in the group sent me the email in the first place, I wouldn't want to send it back to him.

Editing a group list that is not alphabetized is a pain and mistakes are often made. I wouldn't want to make individual groups for all the possible combinations.

I agree this is puzzling. I send emails to many people in a couple of groups put together by interest. When I select a group to email, I type in the group name and there are the addresses.....but not alphabetized. I then go through the list to delete people out of the group that I don't want to send the email to.....for example if one of people in the group sent me the email in the first place, I wouldn't want to send it back to him.

Editing a group list that is not alphabetized is a pain and mistakes are often made. I couldn't

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.

Mail/Provide Mail Feedback

I've sent feedback on this a few times every year for maybe 10 years.  Obviously they don't care, even tho it would be very easy to fix.  I'll bet their programmers do know how to sort.  :-)

Here is what I have done. Yup, I painstakingly have linked on to each address and I have about 100 and put them into a send field on a blank email and then keep this in a draft folder and then access it and copy and paste the addresses and then I can delete the few to whom I do not wish to receive the email. You can further minimize your list into smaller groups than your entire list if you wish. Thus in alpha order instead of helter skelter it is easy to go down the list and delete.

You Apple iPad & iPhone users know the address format is the same but Apple Geeks say these weren't designed for mass mailing and I say the Mac is and I get "Yup I agree with you".  The frustrating thing too is that after each address the window closes and you hit the + sign to go to the next. If the address window stayed open and then you could rapidly click on to the list it would be doable. Why do other email programs easily let you put multiple addresses in alpha order or each address has a small box and you can click on it and go down the list without it closing after each address.  This process is not trademarked(HA!)...can't the gurus at Apple copy it ?