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vas · Nov 4, 2003, 02:22 PM

Very odd behaviour...in Mac OS X 10.3, the Address Book has somehow figured out the titles of people in my list. For example, what was once just "John Smith" or "Jane Doe" is now "Dr. John Smith M.D." or "Ms. Jane Doe R.N." I have never entered this information into Address Book, nor am I connected to an LDAP server. Indeed, Address Book has updated this listings of people I have never even received an email from! It is surprisingly accurate, though.

My questions are these: how does Address Book/Mac OS X know this information? Is there a preference somewhere? How would I turn it off? Has this happened to other people? It's kind of freaking me out...

gorickey · Nov 4, 2003, 02:48 PM

Never seen that happen actually, very interesting...

Haven't input them in your iChat have you?

OAW · Nov 4, 2003, 03:35 PM

I noticed some of that when I synced my AB info with my Exchange contacts. The info was entered in Exchange but not in AB, so after the first sync it all showed up.

OAW

vas · Nov 5, 2003, 07:35 AM

Nope, no Exchange client or server here, nor have I entered any extra info into iChat. In fact, I appear to be the only one I know to which this has happened; friends of mine running Panther report no differences in their contact info from Jag.

This one has me stumped.

Sharky K. · Nov 5, 2003, 08:12 AM

Same problem here. Maybe the are there from the MacOS 9 days???

Love Calm Quiet · Nov 5, 2003, 09:26 AM

If Joe Smith sends you an email from the same email address you have for him in your address book and has his "Real Name" in the email as "Dr. Joseph Smith" would the Mail app perhaps cull that info?

Sharky K. · Nov 5, 2003, 10:12 AM

Originally posted by Love Calm Quiet:
If Joe Smith sends you an email from the same email address you have for him in your address book and has his "Real Name" in the email as "Dr. Joseph Smith" would the Mail app perhaps cull that info?

no, that is not it.

addiecool · Nov 5, 2003, 10:48 AM

same here too. I have some names with added prefix like "Director" or " Manager"

King Bob On The Cob · Nov 5, 2003, 11:44 AM

Did you fill our the job titles?
Or maybe enter it in any Application ever? (Address book has a habit of finding some old OS 7 programs that I forgot I had and importing them when I copy my old OS 9 folder from my old computer for what not reason.)
Or did you enter something in iCal that had to do with an appointment like (Doctor/Dentist/Manager Appointment with Doctor/Dr/MD John Doe) It would not suprise me if they imported from iCal.

::maroma:: · Nov 5, 2003, 01:41 PM

I got this too. Only, I only got a Mr. or Mrs. prefix. I thought that it was just guessing based on the name, but if it's adding things like Dr. and Manager, it's doing something more sneaky.

larkost · Nov 5, 2003, 02:25 PM

The Addressbook.framework has always had places for the salutation field, but Addressbook.app just never displayed them (actually the framework can store just about any information you want to store). What I am guessing is that some application filled this information (like from a vcard), and you just never saw it because Addressbook.app was not displaying it.