Display Contacts By Last Name In Outlook 2007
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By default Outlook sorts your contacts by FirstName, LastName. You can reverse this if you want to have the contacts sorted by last name instead by using the steps outlined below:
- Open Microsoft Outlook.
- From the Tools menu, click Account Settings.
- On the Address Books tab, click Outlook Address Book.
- Click Change.
- Under the list of Outlook Address Books, select the one you want to change the sort order for.
- Click File As (Smith, John).
- Click Close.
- Click Close again.
Exit Outlook to have your changes applied. Once you re-open Outlook, you can verify that the sort order has been changed to last name. From the Tools menu, click Options. From the Preferences tab, click the Contact Options button. Verify that Last, First is listed as the Default “File As” order.
Tags: microsoft office, outlook, microsoft outlook, outlook 2007
7 Comments
Brian Humbrecht
May 26th, 2007
at 12:33am
Diana, this is very helpful tip. Since it is usually several yrs btw my installing or upgrading Outlook on my PC[s] - I go through this problem every time. At least through Outlook 2003 [the latest version I have] the Help menu tells you that you can NOT do this for the ‘Address Book’. Instead MS has a different name other than ‘Address Book’ for this list to implement this procedure in the Help menu. Also MS has a KB article on this procedure, due to using a different name for the ‘Address Book’, that I have never seen appear anywhere else in Outlook! Another simple procedure that MS has made relatively difficult to find & implement! They couldn’t just let you ‘right’ click the name column & change the sort order as they do for many of the other columns in Outlook.
Bill Little
August 3rd, 2007
at 1:32pm
Sadly this “fix” does not work on my Outlook 2007. You can chose any of the “file as” options and it does not change the way names are sorted when sending an email. So far the only way to fix the situation is to save all contacts, delete all contacts, then re-import. Suddenly all is right with the world.
John Meiners
October 5th, 2007
at 9:21am
How do you change all of your contacts so they are listed by company instead of name. I don’t want to do this one at a time.
Bob Johnston
November 12th, 2007
at 1:05pm
Despite your advice, this does not work for Outlook 2003 contacts. Also, the comment from Bill Little about saving then re-importing the contacts file did not work either. Is there another way to ensure the contacts list, when chosen as an address choice for a new email, shows up in last name, then first name?
Simon Walsh
December 7th, 2007
at 12:36am
How do you change all of your contacts so they are listed by company instead of name
John Holecek
April 15th, 2008
at 7:23am
The tip worked for me exactly as described.
Clifford
June 25th, 2008
at 9:07pm
This did not work for me- Outlook 2007 and Exchange server. Still looking for a way to change all and not one at a time.