Contacts list Arrangement

[danny.sierra@omtech.net]

Hi guys i don't know how can i order my contacts by company because is kind of hard sometimes to me to search just by names, is there a way??

[mmorse]

I assume you mean when composing? (aka you don't want to go to to the addresses tab first)

Are they already sorted by address book though? When composing click on 'To:' make sure contacts, or personal & shared contacts is selected then at the search bar put in:addressbook (followed by a name if you want to narrow the search).
-Unfortunately that tiny search bar doesn't work exactly like the main search bar, it doesn't search minor fields at present.

+ don't most companies use one common domain...(ya i know-set personal email addresses aside for a sec)

No one made an RFE (/forums/developers/9966-problem-about-new-messages.html) to ehance 'show names from:' (after you click 'to') to include a list of your address books. Right now there's just 'contacts' or personal & shared contacts' or 'global address list' drop downs. Ie if you select contacts it should then show you a address book drop down.

-Though I would just see where this is at after v5 comes out, as a lot of address book stuff is being totally redone in terms of organization/layout.

Your idea would be to put headers (saying by company is too narrow-someone might not care about that field so we'll say by address book name) between contacts when using autocomplete or any address search.
The problem is, you want name relevance first, so instead do this: add the address book it's contained in to the autocomplete, there's plenty of wasted space after the name/email address anyway.

-Of course draw me a diagram/screenshots if I'm totally off what your asking

So autocomplete results would look like:
First Last <first.last@domain.com> - in:AddressBookFolderName

Because for those using higher resolutions, the autocomplete just has wasted drop down area that could be put to use.
If you want-go ahead and make the RFE's out of any of these ideas.

[danny.sierra@omtech.net]

Thanks MMORSE but, no, I think i express incorrectly, what i want to do is to see my contacts with name and company on my contacts tab, because right now i just see the name and i have to clic in every contact to find his or her company, do i have this functionality?

[mmorse]

Gotcha.
There's also a new detailed cards mode -see your options>addressbook tab to permanently change it (added in 4.5.5?) or the drop down in the upper left corner to temporarily change it. (though you currently can't modify shown fields)

The concept of sectioned off search results It gets a little harder in contact list mode, while showing address book folder sections might happen (make a request if you'd like) showing 'section headers' by other categories when searching would be a serious undertaking.

Though it seems you just want to pick the order/relevance of the fields when simply browsing...searching aside. (because you could just search for the company name/domain) And turn on/off the fields that are shown in the detailed cards etc.

There have been many changes w/ v5 so fire up a beta and see if you like some of the contact browsing improvements.

[mmorse]

detailed cards:

[danny.sierra@omtech.net]

ok mmorse, i'll check then on beta version i hope i got that, anyway i was trying with the search on the contacts tab and it works for now, as i said i hope the new version have it because it would be much easy for me, thanks!

[j1m]

If you edit a contact, you can select how the contact is filed, either by name (first, last; last, first etc) or by company.

I think you want to set all your contacts to be viewed by company. Might take you a while depending on how many contacts you have as I don't think there is a way to batch the process.

[mmorse]

You could set the 'fileAs' with SOAP, etc. Values are 1-7 from top to bottom as in the pic below. (Not to be confused with the 'fileAsStr' which the server generates for display/sorting purposes.)

Enhancements to vote for:
Bug 10675 - address book: support sorting contacts by fields other than name
Bug 8845 - Address Book: sorting by first name