"Bob Lucas" <bob@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:g38j0l$rhb$1@xxxxxx
Quote:
> I have also configured Windows Live Mail to sort contacts
> alphabetically - surname first. However, if I use the contact
> list to
> send a message to Joe Bloggs, the resulting email shows the
> addressee's
> name as Bloggs Joe. In this respect, Outlook Express and the
> Hotmail
> webmail interface are much better. Is there any way of
> configuring the
> contacts list in Windows Live Mail to sort the list by Surname -
> but to
> send outgoing emails with the addressee as Joe Bloggs, not Bloggs
> Joe?
You're talking about two different settings here. In the Contacts
window (list view), you can *sort* by any of the visible fields,
including surname, simply by clicking on the column heading. Another
setting in the View menu of the contacts window is '*Show* *names*
as first last'. This applies only to the Name field, which is
generated by WLMail and contains Nickname if there is one and First
name Last name if there isn't. If these are absent too, it uses the
preferred (I think) email address. This is the field that appears,
together with email address(es) if you select the icon next to To:
etc. in a compose window and gets written to the addressee field. If
it really means a lot to you, there's nothing to stop you manually
populating the Nickname field with, say, First name Last name. This
will override the 'Show names...' setting. It wouldn't take long to
export your contacts to csv, open the csv in Excel and insert a
little formula to fill the Nickname column, save as csv and
reimport.
I find I never use either of these when composing a message. In your
case, I bet the right contact would come up with one click and two
keystrokes: New, then sm. Only if you have more than 30 contacts
with the same combination of letters (sm) will you even have to
scroll to pick the right one.
--
Noel