(each application the latest, although Entourage hasn't been updated to Entourage Exchange Web Services Edition).
I just downloaded and ran "Spanning Tools," a utility for "cleaning" contacts and calendar data to make certain it plays nice with Sync Services. I encountered a few interesting problems: 1. Spanning Tools doesn't deal well with "unusual" suffixes (other than those in AddressBook.app's limited set). So, for example, it doesn't know that RN and R.N. are abbreviations for "Registered Nurse." It provides the user the opportunity to ignore these one-by-one, but it doesn't store those choices, so the flagged contacts need to be ignored every time the address book database is scanned. 2. Neither AddressBook.app nor Entourage's Address Book have "middle name" fields. When I enter middle names or initials, or FirstInitial MiddleName type addresses, I put all this data in the First Name field in Entourage. Spanning Tools reports the presence of a space in the middle name field. I'm surprised that neither of these contacts databases store middle name information in a separate field. 3. Apple's Address Book has a checkbox for contacts that are supposed to be displayed "by company." Entourage puts a copy of the company name into the firstname field for display purposes (there doesn't appear to be any REAL data in that field in the database), but, even if there's no person's name associated with a company entry in the Entourage address book, the flag doesn't get set to display the entry in Apple's Address Book by company. Is there some way to automate that mapping? The "Contacts Cleaner" app offers to fix anomalies in AddressBook app itself or to open the problematic contact in AddressBook.app. If I "fix" the anomalies in Contacts Cleaner itself, a new Address Book.app copy of the original contact is spawned, recreating the flawed contact. However, if I make the changes in AddressBook.app itself and save the changes, they seem to "stick" the way I intend. I've now done a few copies of my Entourage database file to my laptop after completing this massage on my Mac Pro, as well an iPhone sync to the Mac Pro, and it doesn't appear that any anomalies have crept back in yet. Anyone have comments? Jim Robertson -- -- YouTalk mailing list List address: [email protected] List information: http://entourage.mvps.org/support_options/list.html List moderator: [email protected], [email protected] To unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
