Address Book mailing labels - changing fields

This may be what you are looking for. Not sure.

Using custom labels
You can change the label that appears next to a piece of information on a contact's card. For example, you might want to change "work" to "support" next to a phone number.


Select the contact that you want to change.
Click the Edit button at the bottom of the window.
Click the label next to a field, then choose Custom from the pop-up menu.
Enter a new label for the field.

The new custom label appears on this contact's card only.

If you want to change a specific label on all cards in your Address Book, edit the card template. Choose Address Book > Preferences and click Template. The Template pane also allows you to add other types of fields on contact cards, such as a nickname, job title, birthday, anniversary, and URL. Use the Add Field menu.

*Print custom mailing labels in Address Book*
Address Book's label print feature is a great one step way to print out labels for things like Christmas cards and newsletters but it has one fatal flaw: you can't edit the way it prints the names of the recepients. This script allows you to print whatever you want in the name field of the printed contact label (such as 'Dr. Brian Smith and Mrs. Sue Jones') which is impossible in the current version of Address Book (4.04).

_*Backup before running the script*_
This is VERY important. *Remember to back up your Address Book Database right before running the script* by choosing 'File: Backup Address Book'. You need this backup for two reasons: in case anything goes wrong, and once you finish the script you must revert to Address Book Backup to use the address book with the original data in it (because once the script finishes, the data in the Title, Middle, First and Last names fields are deleted).

*How it works and what to do*
Create a custom user field in each of your address book entries called 'Mailing Label', by adding a new 'relationship' field (the list of things like father, mother, assistant... etc.) and choosing 'Custom', and then typing in 'Mailing Label' for the name of this custom field. In the newly created custom user field named 'Mailing Label' type the desired field data such as "Dr. Brian Smith and Mrs. Sue Jones". After finishing adding the 'Mailing Label' field data to the contacts you want to send custom labels to, *Back up the Address Book* (as described above: by choosing 'File: Backup Address Book'). After backing up your data, in Address Book select the contacts you want to print labels for. Open Script Editor and copy and paste the script below. Press the 'Run' button. After the script runs (it takes a bit of time), you can then choose to print the labels using the 'File:Print' command in Address Book, then choosing 'Style: Mailing Labels' in the top right of the window. Once your labels are printed, revert back to the Address Book Backup that you created by choosing the 'File: Revert to Address Book Backup' command in Address Book. Assuming you backed up right before you ran the script, you now have your original data back with the Mailing Labels also there as well.

Notes:
You will have to (1)backup your Address Book database, (2) run this script, and (3)revert to your Address Book Backup everytime you want to print custom labels.

The "Mailing Label" name is just the name I choose for my custom field, but you can use any name assuming that you change the script below and have a custom field of the same name.

I am not responsible if this script hoses your data. I am providing this as my best attempt to try to help others overcome the current shortcomings of Address Book. If you didn't back up your data and something goes wrong, it is your own fault. 🙂 If anyone wants to improve this script, have at it! One idea would be to print the labels in Address Book directly from this script, and then once they print, to revert back to previous data that was in the first, middle and last name and title fields (maybe held in temporary variables? although this would be very memory intensive?).

Enjoy!
Patrick

tell application "Address Book"
set mylist to selection
repeat with thisperson in mylist
if ((related names whose label is "Mailing Label") of thisperson) exists then
set ML_name to ((value of related names whose label is "Mailing Label") of thisperson) as Unicode text
set first name of thisperson to ML_name
delete middle name of thisperson
delete last name of thisperson
delete title of thisperson
end if
end repeat
end tell

Message was edited by: Patrick Waters

Message was edited by: Patrick Waters

Message was edited by: Patrick Waters

Message was edited by: Patrick Waters - sorry for the edits... it wasn't accepting the properly formated applescript for some reason so I had to input it without tabs and spaces...

There are several third-party apps that provide the sort of functionality that you are looking for. Try, for example, Roll Call Directory.

AK

Thanks for your reply Austin.

Actually, I had already read one of your posts in which you suggest this Austin, but *Roll Call Directory does not read from custom address book fields so it doesn't solve the exact problem here.*
(although you are right in pointing out that it does have more functionality than the Apple Address Book).

In fact, the very reason I wrote this script for Apple Address Book is because all of the third party software packages either:
1) don't support custom fields
2) were very cumbersome and required a lot of work to get the data the way you need it to print correctly (and couldn't do it directly from the Address Book vCard data)

I tried:
Roll Call Directory
Mail Factory
SOHO Labels and Envelopes
Address Book Reports
the new version of Pages in iWork 2008
Exporting the data out as CSV or Tab delimited files and trying countless other programs (only ExportAddressBook actually exported custom fields)

Until Apple updates Address Book's label feature, the script I wrote seems to be the easiest way of printing custom name field mailing labels.
Patrick

Hello Patrick. That is an impressive list of packages you have tried and rejected. As an advocate of Applescript as the solution to many of the little customisation tasks people have, I like the idea of your script. However, I don't the idea of having the user remember to do the backup and restore. I would suggest perhaps modifying it so that the script first uses Finder to make a copy of the AddressBook.data file, then does the AB stuff. Alternatively, and as a minimum, stick in a display dialog to remind them, and they can cancel if they haven't done it.

AK