More questions for Entourage users...

[kbeartx]

Is there a way to sort my address book alphabetically by first name (as I am accustomed to, from using Netscape Messenger all these years)?

When setting up mail filters / rules (which I have working mostly great, now), there is a checkbox (just below the 'Actions' section in the lower part of the dialog) that says 'Do not apply other rules to messages that meet these criteria' but it is always greyed out - how can I enable this function / feature?

TIA,

kbeartx

(this is in Entourage 2001 and OS 9.1)

[RobW]

I"m using the OSX version, and I don't remember how it appears in the OS9 version, but in the general address book window you can click on the heading "name" as you see here:

 

I know that in  an address book "group" that I have, in that window there's a button to "sort list" that will sort that group alphabetically.

I'm not sure about the filter question. I'll have to fool around with it later this evening if you don't have an answer by then.

HTH

[kbeartx]

Sorry, I should have made mice-elf clearer.

I see how to sort the address list by name (alpha- ascending or decending, it works just like the Finder list view), but Netscape Messenger sorts the address list by first name whereas Entourage sorts the list by last name, with no apparent way to change that default.  

I suppose if it really continues to bother me over time, I can edit each address entry and swap the first and last name, but I am not yet at that point.

To be fair, Netscape's default seemed strange and counter-intuitive at first, but after nearly ten years, a guy gets used to seeing his addresses listed in a certain order, and it's disconcerting to now have them all shuffled around and 'mixed up' with no apparent way to sort them any other way (arrogant, inconsiderate software engineers!).

 - kbeartx

[Paddy]

Ah KBear, you've hit on one of my Entourage pet peeves - in reverse. I'm happy that it sorts my address book by last name, but annoyed that I can't sort my groups by last name - in groups, it sorts by FIRST name! (There is an Applescript to fix this - http://www.applescriptcentral.com/arc.php?letter=g )

So - put your entire address book into a group - then sort away!

[kbeartx]

Paddy -

this sounds promising!

But now I'm hesitant because I'm not clear on the distinction between 'Groups'  and 'Categories'.

I discovered the Categories feature yestiddy and happily setup a bunch of 'em and now I have almost all of my myriad addresses sorted into one of twelve categories, and I can foresee the usefulness of being able to click on the categories heading from time to time and temporarily sort the whole bloody list by my color-coded categories for various reasons.  

I wonder if putting all my addresses into a single Group so that I can sort by First Name will diminish or eliminate the usefulness of the Categories, and I am reluctant to experiment and discover this empirically, because sometimes these things are 'irreversible' - do you know?

thnask,

 - kbeartx

[Paddy]

KBear - back up your Microsoft User Data folder and then try it. As far as I can see from the Entourage Help menu, there should be no problem with this. Categories are independent of groups - you can email an entire group, but you can't do that with a category. You could have lots of people who are in your family category, but only a few of those could be in your "Send the latest pics of the pet turtle" group - alphabetized as you choose.

One caveat, though it hasn't got anything to do with this discussion directly - I ran that AppleScript I mentioned earlier to re-sort my one large mailing list and things started to behave very strangely. I couldn't get out of the script - it kept wanting to sort another list. Finally force quit Entourage and then restarted - upon which I found that my signatures file and then my "mailing list" file were supposedly corrupt. Tossed things out - none of them things I normally used and all was back to normal. My group wasn't sorted though. Hmmm...could just be symptoms of overload in Entourage - I have thousands of messages awaiting my sorting/deleting. Gotta get that 120GB drive installed and things updated/tidied up!!!! I need a clone - of ME!