How do I change the sorting order in my contacts on my macbook pro?

Preferences > General > Sort

There are two options in the preferences setting in the Contacts or Address Book tool; sort by first name, and sort by last name. That setting is in the preferences general setting, and this setup is typical of OS X 10.7.

If you have a help desk, do call them, particularly if there's something unusual about the set-up of the systems you're using. In some computing environments, the OS X settings are locked down by the IT folks, for instance.

I was struggling to fix this myself, after coming across this thread and seeing Mr. Hoffman's reply, I finally figured it out. I am a brand new MacBook user and still learning the GUI (used PC my whole life). I was trying to change this in System Preferences instead of the Contacts Preferences.

So Tara, seeing its been more than 6 months since your post you've probably already fixed your issue, but if not, and for anyone else that is new to mac like me and need just a little more detailed instructions:

Launch Contacts -> Click "Contacts" in top left corner -> Click "Preferences" -> Sort options located in the "General" tab of the contacts preferences window.

Thanks for getting me on the right track Mr. Hoffman!!

After all these years, am I alone in finding it rather absurd that the response from Apple is "you can sort by first or last name"...?

That's it ???

Monopoly market share must be nice.

Is there a way to do this same thing in Apple mail?