OL97: How to Change the Name of Contacts in the Address Book

ID: Q163178

The information in this article applies to:

SUMMARY

This article describes how you can use Microsoft Outlook 97 to display your Contacts from the Outlook Address Book dialog box in a different format, such as "Last Name, First Name" (without the quotation marks).

MORE INFORMATION

The Contacts list in your Outlook Address Book uses the Subject field when displaying persons in the Address Book dialog box. Although you can change the way individual contacts are displayed in the Address Book, you cannot use the user interface to change the display name uniformly for all contacts at once.

Follow these steps to display an individual Outlook Address Book Contact by "Last Name, First Name" (without the quotation marks):

1. In Outlook, open a Contact.

2. In the Contact dialog box, click the All Fields tab.

3. In the Select From list, click to select All Contact Fields.

4. Under the Name column, find the Subject field. This is the field that 

   the Address Book uses to display your contact's name.
5. In the Value box, type the name the way you want it to appear in the 
   Address Book, for example, "Doe, Jane" (without the quotation marks).
6. On the Contact dialog box toolbar, click the Save And Close button to 
   save your changes, and then close the contact.
On the Outlook Tools menu, click Address Book to open your Address Book. In the "Show Names from the" list, click to select your Outlook Address Book Contacts. You should see the contact that you modified listed as "Last Name, First Name."

REFERENCES

For information on how to change all your contacts at once using VBScript code, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 

   ARTICLE-ID:  Q165139
   TITLE     :  OL97: How to Reorder Outlook Address Book Names
For more information about how to make your Contacts folder available as an Address Book, type "How do I use contacts as an address book?" in the Office Assistant, click Search, and then click to view "Set up a Contacts folder to display in the Address Book dialog box."

For more information about viewing available contact fields, type "view all fields for a contact" in the Office Assistant, click Search, and then click to view "View all standard fields for an item."

Additional query words: 97 

Keywords          : GnlCont 
Version           : WINDOWS:97
Platform          : WINDOWS

Last Reviewed: December 3, 1998