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Outlook Contacts - primary sort key

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by tim

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When originally I transferred a Psion phone list into Outlook I chose to sort this list by first name and then by last name, so "Mark Twain" comes before "Samuel Clemens" rather than "Clemens, Samuel" before "Twain, Mark."

Since then my contactlist has grown from one hundred to 1200+, making selecting among 13 John's and 8 Mary's a real nuisance. Despite exporting the whole file into Excel or Dbase or other programs, changing the column ordering and re-importing, I have never been able to change the primary sort key in this Outlook database. Yes, I know that within Outlook it is possible to display the Contacts according to various fields, but primary sort is passed along to other programs accessing this information. (For example,a mail merge to Word, generating an email Group, sending a fax from an HP program, etc., etc., etc.)

So, can you pls investigate to figure out what's required to get Clemens before Twain?

Many thanks, Tim

5 replies

by dklippert

Does this article help at all?
(Type the Q number into the ?For solutions containing...? box at support.microsoft.com)

How to Control the Sort Order of Your Contacts

Q196741

by shanghai sam

Working through the various versions of Outlook, in O97 I found a macro (or FORM) which re-ordered the list. It drew an error when running, but worked anyway. Thanks, Tim

by dixon_fe

Tools, Options. On the PREFERENCES tab, click on the Contact Options button. Select the way you want Lastname, First name. Viola!

by shanghai sam

Unfortunately this doesn't do the trick.

When pressing the [To:] button for a new email my Contacts are still sorted as they were before with Zola Budd at the end and Aaron James at the start.

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