[Macworld]

Post your comments for Bulk edit Address Book data here

[flybynight]

If your are using Bento, could you do a bulk-edit there? Just curious.

[XMattingly]

That is slick! Thanks, Chris.

[rab777hp]

how do spacing issues work out with this?

[Chris Breen]

rab777hp said:

how do spacing issues work out with this?

I'm not sure what you're asking. Do you mean do you have to insert special characters to produce spaces? If so, the answer is no.

[rab777hp]

by spacing issues i meant that sometimes using find and replace, especially with TextEdit, extra spaces get added and taken away I was referring to formatting.

[Chris Breen]

Oh, in that case, no, I haven't noticed any extra spaces.

[braintoniq]

One of the best Mac tricks I've seen in awhile. Thanks, Chris. (and I would've never guessed this one on my own).

[Foxhoyle]

Chris--is it possible to do something similar with iCal? I know I can export and edit the .ics file...just not sure how to do something like add a description to all of the entries. Thanks for the excellent article!

[spiderbat]

An alternative method to make bulk changes in AddressBook is by means of AppleScript (sorry, some programming required!).
For instance, the following snippet changes the street address of every person in AB whose address contains a given string:
tell application "Address Book"
-- we assume that people whose address must be changed have just
-- one address
set a to people whose (street of first address) contains "Cat Street"
repeat with p in a
set (street of first address) of p to "Yellow Cat Street"
end repeat
save addressbook -- don't forget this!
end tell

[EdwardLV]

Yes, Bento can easily do this Bulk Edit while in the Spreadhsheet view, use Find to group all the addresses to change. Change just the top one appearing in the list.

Then click and drag the bottom right corner of this field, in the newly changed record, downward to include ALL the records you wish to change. Done.

Bento seems to contain all the 'fixes' to Address Book that it badly needs. Publisher of Bento, Filemaker, owned by Apple, charges you $49 NO DISCOUNTS FOUND - for these new features. Note: all changes to Bento are automatically updated in Address Book and vice versa.

[kananga]

When in the table view in Bento, I don't see any way to just grab the lower right corner and fill the contents like in Excel. Are you sure you can do this in Bento? I just tried it with no success.

[kananga]

I just went through the help file for Bento, and it does say you can do this, but mine doesn't work. Weird. Off-topic for this discusssion, but my Bento is not working.

[EdwardLV]

While in the Spreadsheet view, select ONE DATA BOX, by clicking on it. It should be the Top Most data box, as you will be 'filling down'.

A rectangle will appear around this data box with a SMALL CIRCLE in the bottom right corner.

This circle is what you DRAG DOWNWARDS to fill the boxes below, with the same data as the Top Box.

As you drag it, your mouse / pointer will change into a small Cross Hair and the rectangle will enlarge downward, filling the boxes below

with the Same Data as the top most box.