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Change address formats in Address Book Apps
OK, this is picky of me, but I got fed up having a line for "County" in my UK-format addresses in AddressBook. It irked me. After a brief hunt, I found that I can modify the address format for each country's addresses by modifying the file named ABAddressFormats.plist, located here:
/System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBook.framework/Versions/A/Resources
This is a fairly easy-to-understand list of all the standard address formats. I just changed the UK entry to:
    uk = {
        COUNTRY = "United Kingdom";
        FORMAT = "Street\nCity\nZIP\nCountry";
        City = City;
        Country = Country;
        Street = Street;
        ZIP = Postcode;
    };  
Voila! No county in my addresses, and everything seems to work fine. Now I sleep easier at night. You may wish to back this file up before you edit it, and make sure you quit Address Book first.
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Change address formats in Address Book | 11 comments | Create New Account
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Change address formats in Address Book
Authored by: sig eigei on Feb 03, '05 10:11:00AM

This seems like a great hint. But, I am wondering if anyone out there has a way to get Address Book.app to automatically change the address format to the country of the address entered.

It has always been odd to me that you set (or usually forget to set) a format for your addresses manually since if you ever sent mail to that person the address would of course need to be in proper format of the counrty they are in.



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Change address formats in Address Book
Authored by: daybrother on Feb 03, '05 01:52:58PM

What he just said. It bothers me too.



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Change address formats in Address Book
Authored by: markian on Feb 03, '05 04:29:19PM

This seems totally, cool, but I'm not sure I understand. Is there a way to make Addressbook display _different address formats? It drives me crazy that everything is displayed canadian-style. I have no idea how to enter my friend's address in Dublin, or Bratislava, for example.

Can someone point me at what I should be doing?

email me! markian AT cs dot Ualberta dot CA



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Change address formats in Address Book
Authored by: tim1724 on Feb 03, '05 05:25:52PM

To change the address format for a particular entry, do the following:

  1. click Edit to edit the card
  2. click on "work" or "home" or whatever the label to the left of the address says
  3. Go to the "Change Address Format" submenu of the popup menu
  4. Choose the country

---
Tim Buchheim

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Change address formats in Address Book
Authored by: mathieubill on Feb 06, '05 05:22:24AM

Hi Markian,

If you want to change the format of the address, just click on the left button of the address (usually labelled "work"). You will see a list of labels (work, home, other) then "Custom... " and then at the bottom "Change address format..." Click on it and you will have a list of countries. Just select the appropriate country (In your case Slovakia) and you are done!

Mathieu



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Change address formats in Address Book
Authored by: alblue on Feb 04, '05 11:41:42AM

Firstly, you've put 'COUNTRY' and 'Country' in there, which is bound to confuse some invocations of the app.

Secondly, we do have Counties in this country; I'm from Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom. Taking the County away from your address doesn't change that.



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Change address formats in Address Book
Authored by: milksheikh on Oct 02, '07 08:14:28AM

Replying 2+ years after the fact (for those who find this hint via a search)...

To keep the county, but lose the blank line when there is no county (e.g. London), I changed the format to the following:

FORMAT = "Street\nCity State\nZIP\nCountry";

It shows the county after the city (on the same line) if there is one, otherwise just the city.



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Change address formats in Address Book
Authored by: zemble on Feb 06, '05 05:22:06AM

I agree it would be useful to have different address formats based on the country for each address. This is the one reason I still use Entourage, because it switches between English and Japanese formats at the flick of a menu and on an entry by entry basis. Address book seems to have just one format for everything and mixing Japanese (or I guess other 2-byte languages) with English makes things very unpleasant.

BTW, there are a lot of places in the UK which have to have the county (basically like 'state' in the US) specified. I'm from Sileby. Put that in the address without the county and few postmen will find it. Of course, theoretically, having the correct postcode should work, but even UK postcodes are a law unto themselves, not simple numbers like in the US or Japan.



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Change address formats in Address Book
Authored by: Guntis on May 20, '05 09:40:02AM

Now when the Tiger is out in the wild, the path mentioned above is gone for good... Can anyone help to find where is that file now? Latvia is still missing in the country list. I added it manually before, but now that file isn't there and I cannot format mailing addresses for envelopes properly...

---
I'm not really a Windows user...I just play one at work.



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Change address formats in Address Book
Authored by: markformac on Jan 03, '06 11:26:49PM

Anyone have any ideas on how to format your address book for apartment numbers or suites?

---
Mark Brooks



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Compatable with iPhone?
Authored by: jcwacky on May 30, '08 01:26:45PM

I have been using this tip for a while, and it works great. Instead of removing the county completly though, I just duplicated the "gb" entry, called it "g2" and "United Kingdom (No County)" and removed the county from that one. So now in iCal and can set some address formats to include a county and other to not.

My question is does anyone know how editing this file (either way) will effect synchronisation with the iPhone?



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