I was excited to find the article Manage your holiday mailing list with Address Book on The Unofficial Apple Weblog. One thing I dread this time every year is fighting with Microsoft Word and Outlook to print out mailing addresses for holiday cards. But now that I’m 2/3 converted* to the wonderful world of Mac, I decided to try the mailing label output options in Address Book.
The verdict? Mixed results. The techniques outlined at TUAW work to a certain extent, but as one of the commenters there points out, Address Book is “tricky” smart in ways I can’t quite comprehend. For instance, theoretically, if you have an entry for John Doe and a spouse listed as Jane Doe, the mailing label is output for John and Jane Doe. But if you have friends like Mark Smith and Mary Ellen Smith, all bets are off (I couldn’t get it to print in the “smart” way).
And if I had a child or multiple children listed, the output was all over the board. On some labels the child trumped the mother and the mother’s name disappeared. On some labels I couldn’t get spouse or children to appear. In some cases where I have friends with spouses that have different last names, they both printed out. But in some cases, only the main name printed out. Some names were left hanging: “John Public and”
Address Book is not quite there yet for my needs, and it’s “tricky smart” features had me outsmarted and flummoxed. I ended up going back to the old stand-by: an Excel sheet I keep updated just for this purpose, and a mail merge with Word.
(*I’m waiting on the expected hardware upgrade for the Mac Pro before replacing my aging WIndows machine at home.)
