Turning Address Book Into Formatted Content

[MrSanDiego]

I am trying to help my best friend's mom, as her husband recently passed and my friend is currently overseas. The problem is I cannot figure it out how to do this, and I have been searching online for hours. Finally I typed in Excel Forum and I found this site. I am sure I will be able to find the answer here, as it seems like a pretty simple thing, but it is beyond any expertise I have.

So here's the deal. She recently got a new computer and imported her old address book over. What she wants to do now is print out the entire list (around 300 contacts) in alphabetical order so she has a hard copy that she can put in a notebook. Well she has tried several times to print it out, but it never prints in alphabetical order by last name, it does it by first name. Even when she goes in and gets it to display in the correct order, it won't print that way.

I did a bunch of research and for some reason the way Windows Address book is setup, it does not print in alphabetical order. I could be wrong, but that is what I read. On several sites it says the best solution is to export the list as a CVS file and they sort it alphabetically.

Well I did that no problem. The problem I am having is I HAVE NO IDEA how to take a CVS file and convert it to formatted readable text that I can print out? I hope this makes sense.

Just so I am sure you understand me... I want to take a CVS file that looks something like this:

FIRST NAME|LASTNAME|ADDRESS|CITY|STATE|ZIP|PHONE|EMAIL|NOTES|

and turn it into something like a Word document or some form so it is prinatble:

John Doe
1234 Main Street
San Diego, CA 92121
(800) 555-1212
[email protected]
Notes: Wife Lisa Anniversary 4-18-1992 Children: Fred Bdays 4-5-2000 Lisa 3-30-1999

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Thanks,

Doug
P.S. Sorry for the long post to ask a simple question!

[royUK]

Just open the .csv file with Excel

Use Text To Columns to get the data into separate columns.

Then you will need to rearrange the data to the format you want

[MrSanDiego]

I am not sure what st open means? Sorry for being dumb about this.

[royUK]

It was a typo, I've amended the text

[MrSanDiego]

I am still confused. When I open the Excel file it already is in separate columns. I want to take the columns and turn then into formatted text. Am I missing something?

[royUK]

The way your original question was laid out you seemed to be saying the information is in one column separated by |.

[Down Under]

From what you have described I think what I would do is sort the columns by last name, then insert a number in column A (1 to 300).

Then you could VLOOKUP everything off of that number, possibly using a ceiling function as your VLOOKUP reference if all entries had the same amount of data.

[MrSanDiego]

I am sorry if I wrote was confusing. When I open the file using the delimited function I get the following fields:

Column A - FIRST NAME
Column B - LAST NAME
Column C - STREET ADDRESS
Column D - CITY
Column E - STATE
Column F - ZIP
Column G - HOME PHONE
Column H - MOBILE PHONE
Column I - EMAIL
Column J - NOTES (This cell varies in size depending on size of family)

I want to take that info somehow, and make it look like this:

FIRST NAME LAST NAME
STREET ADDRESS
CITY, STATE ZIP
Home Phone: PHONE
Mobile Phone: MOBILE
Email: EMAIL
Notes: NOTES

Does this help?

Thanks again,

Doug