Contact List Business Names

[mshell.hughes]

Can anyone please tell me if there is a way to change my default contacts view to First Last rather than Last First? Going through every contact to change the view is not efficient.

[adoland]

What I'm looking for is a simple rule (upon import and applied when any new contact is entered) that operates as follows: if the first name and last name of a contact are blank, display the company name. Outlook seems to have no trouble doing this, Thunderbird has no trouble doing this so why is it that Zimbra is so challenged to do this?

It never seems to be simple; e.g., Zimbra gives you seven filing options and Apple, who is very good at predicting customer behavior, only gives you two in Address Book (first and last). Perhaps, vastly improved database architecture and search capability over the years have led to fewer choices. What Zimbra is surely lacking is a default filing criteria in Preferences. This is 8723 in Bugzilla - shame on Zimbra for leaving this unaddressed since 2006.

I imported over 4,000 contacts into Zimbra. These are a mix of individual contacts (with name, perhaps company, email, etc.) and a significant number (100s? I haven't counted) of contacts that are company-only contacts. In this latter group I have service providers (e.g., Comcast, Verizon, etc.) as well as restaurants (where I don't have a name, but I've collected the business card on the way out the door because it was a great experience), etc.

I would export the 4,000, manipulate and re-import they way you want them, but without a default for adding new contacts, this is somewhat futile.

[lschmidt]

Adoland,
Thanks for chiming in. Great to know it's in the bug list, but your point about Apple is exactly the right one. Too many software programs are designed with an abundance of choices when users just want to accomplish a task. Agree ... shame on Zimbra for losing site of this bug for the last five years...