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Avoid a couple of Address Book printing bugs Apps
This is probably too late for the holidays, but if you're late getting those cards out, maybe this will still help you.

Address Book's envelope printing has been working well, for the most part, and I've been taking advantage of some of the nifty features, like including a picture near the return address and automatically printing the Spouse field. (Hint: if you don't know your friend's spouse's name, but you want to acknowledge that they have a family in your holiday mailing, put family in the Spouse field -- envelopes wil say George Smith and family, which is a nice touch).

All is going great, until I get to the envelope I printed for a friend who was just married this year. I really wanted to include her husband's name, but for some reason, it wasn't showing up. I finally figured out that the name in the Spouse field will not print if it begins with an A (go figure). The workaround I came up with was to change the A to Ă? (Option-e, shift-A). The name will then show up on the envelope. A little clunky, but it was the best I could come up with.

Another bug to look out for shows up when trying to create your own envelope templates. When you select File->Print in Address Book, a sheet comes up that allows you to choose label, list and envelope styles and to define your own template. The problem is, when you choose Layout->Layout->Define custom…, you are not able to edit the value fields that result. The workaround here is to go ahead and give a name to the layout you have just started, choose Cancel from the Print dialog, and then go back and choose File->Print (cmd+p) again. Your parameter fields will now be editable.

Now get those cards out!

[robg adds: At first, I wasn't able to replicate the "spouse names starting with A don't print" glitch; they seemed to work fine for me. But then, in talking with my buddy Kirk McElhearn, he figured out the problem. The spouse's name will not print if and only if the spouse's name begins with the same letter as the entry's name -- Andrew and Amy, Bill and Becky, etc. Any other combination works fine. Unfortunately, you can't use a leading space to avoid the problem, either. The only workaround appears to be physically modifying the first letter in some manner. Hopefully this gets fixed quickly.]
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Avoid a couple of Address Book printing bugs
Authored by: lorienken on Dec 29, '05 06:50:00AM

Another bug:

If you try to print labels, say, Avery 5160 and have its 10x3 boxes all filled in with your own address, it won't let you. A very annoying bug.



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Here is the real Address Book Bug
Authored by: stoli on Dec 29, '05 10:41:21AM
No -- the real address book label printing bug is actually more insidious than not printing a "spouse" if the names begin with the same letter. The real bug is that a spouse's name will not be printed if it matches the first name of anyone else in your address book. Here is a simple way to reproduce:
  1. Create a new user, open their address book
  2. Create a new entry in address book Foo Bar, who lives at 123 Fake Street, Springfield MO 99999 and whose spouse is Baz.
  3. Attempt to print, note that the name should be "Foo Bar and Baz"
  4. Add a new entry in address book named "Baz Bat"
  5. Attempt to print out Foo Bar again, note that the spouse is missing!
  6. To disprove Rob's clarification, add Bill Anyname, with spouse Beth, living at 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield MO 99999
  7. Print Bill, and note that Beth does show up!


[ Reply to This | # ]
Here is the real Address Book Bug
Authored by: DJ_Coder on Dec 29, '05 12:40:38PM

I tried and simply could not get this spuse "feature" to work. I followed your instructions, and I do not see spuse anywhere. Is this something that pops up only when looking in "print" mode?

could someone give specific directions on how to "see" the spouse feature?

Just in case I am using Address Book v4.0.3.

Thanks



[ Reply to This | # ]
Here is the real Address Book Bug
Authored by: settlagemj on Dec 29, '05 02:03:23PM

I'm using 10.4.3 and addressbook is 4.0.3 (483). I don't have the spouse field available to add under add field or edit template. Which version has a spouse field or do I have some issue with the addressbook preferences?

Thanks!



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Here is the real Address Book Bug
Authored by: rycardo on Dec 29, '05 03:42:42PM

Hi,

I'm using 3.x of Address Book. Highlight an Address Book entry. Then click Card->Add Field->Related Names. Now in your Address Book entry, change Friend to spouse (or any other label).

Hope this helps (in getting the spouse field),

Rycardo



[ Reply to This | # ]
Here is the real Address Book Bug
Authored by: stoli on Dec 29, '05 06:41:08PM
To avoid issues where you may have changed the default template without realizing it, follow these steps in Address Book Version 4.0.3 (483) to get the spouse field:
  1. Open up address book
  2. Add a new entry
  3. Select "spouse" from the popup menu that by default should say "friend"
These steps work for me, and I am pretty sure I did not change the templates.

[ Reply to This | # ]
Here is the real Address Book Bug
Authored by: stoli on Dec 29, '05 07:15:05PM

Sorry, I meant to add that you should perform these steps on a brand new user's address book. That way you are sure that the default template has not been changed.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Here is the real Address Book Bug
Authored by: robg on Dec 29, '05 10:12:16PM

OK, now I'm confused ... I can't even get this morning's results to replicate, and I know the "A - A" thing was causing issues then.

Sigh. Suffice it to say, there are glitches in AB printing...

-rob.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Avoid a couple of Address Book printing bugs
Authored by: arcticwind on Dec 30, '05 06:12:48AM
Check out this thread at Apple Support. It seems there is some fuzzy matching going on that is not very robust determining what gets included on the label when. The fix in this thread worked for me and I can now reliably get spouse information on (or off) the label as needed.

[ Reply to This | # ]
Avoid a couple of Address Book printing bugs
Authored by: JKT on Jan 02, '06 06:59:57AM

A better (in many respects) alternative to using Address Book to print envelopes in 10.4.x is to get the excellent EasyEnvelopes dashboard widget from Ambrosia. Search for it at Versiontracker.com or Macupdate.com.

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PB G4, 1.5 GHz, 2x512MB RAM, 128MB VRAM, 80 GB 5400rpm HD, SuperDrive, MacOS X 10.4.3

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[ Reply to This | # ]
feature not localized
Authored by: sd on Jan 05, '06 04:11:40AM

the word between husband and wife is always "and", even if OS language is not English.
It is not localized (in French it should be "et").

Bug reported to Apple and classified as 'duplicate' so they are supposed to be aware of that...



[ Reply to This | # ]
See this other tip
Authored by: noworryz on Dec 16, '06 06:52:56PM

See this other tip for more info on the problem:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20051221232010333

[ Reply to This | # ]