OL97: OL98: (CW) Cannot Sort By Last Name in Personal Address Book

You are using the Personal Address Book (PAB) with Microsoft Outlook 98 and want the address entries to be sorted by last name. Even though you select the "Show Names by Last Name" option in the Properties of the Personal Address Book service, the names are still not sorted.

The First and Last Name of the recipient are both in the First Name field.

In order to prepare the PAB entries to sort properly, follow these steps:

1. On the Tools menu, click Address Book.
2. In Show Names From, click Personal Address Book.
3. Click an entry and on the File Menu, click Properties.
4. Click the Business tab, right-click the recipient's last name and on the shortcut menu click Cut.
5. Right-click the Last Name field and on the shortcut menu, click Paste.

This procedure assures that the first and last name of the recipient are in the proper fields.

If the sort order is not currently set to Last Name, First Name, to change the order follow these steps:

1. On the Tools menu, click Services and then click Personal Address Book.
2. On the Personal Address Book tab, click to select "Last Name, First Name (Smith, John)."

When you add a recipient to the PAB by right-clicking on the resolved name in a received mail message, the name is added as a complete text string into the First Name field. This leaves the Last Name field blank causing these fields to be ignored when the sort order is reversed.

If you are using Outlook in an Microsoft Exchange Server environment and you add Global Address List (GAL) recipients to the PAB, these entries will sort. When adding GAL recipients to the PAB, the fully populated GAL form is used.

For more information on using the Personal Address Book, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: