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quagmire

macrumors 604
Original poster
Apr 19, 2004
6,870
2,292
My parents are finally migrating to the iPhone 4S. I activate my moms iPhone today and get her contacts transferred over from her dumb phone to the iPhone using Verizon's backup assistant. There is a problem though. The dumb phone organizes the contact list in Last, First name format and as we know iPhone does it in First, Last name format. So when it transferred the contacts over, the iPhone saw Schmo, Joe as Schmo being the first name and Joe being the last name.

Is there a way to fix this besides to manually fix it in the iPhone? My dad has 500+ contacts. Would be painful to do that manually......
 

mattraehl

macrumors 6502
Feb 26, 2005
384
1
I doubt there is any way to fix this on the iPhone itself. Your only hope might be if he is using a Mac, you might be able to find some AppleScript which will go through your contacts and flip the last and first names, setup iCloud syncing and it would propagate to the iPhone. If your dad really has 500 contacts this might be a good time to cull the contact list! ;)

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Alternatively, you could change the preference on the iPhone so it "looks" like the names are correct. But this would be a poor solution because your dad would have to enter all his contacts backwards going forward.
 

rosemary1

macrumors regular
Aug 9, 2011
226
4
Are you sure they imported incorrectly? You can choose between First, Last or Last, First in the iPhone settings.

If it is incorrect, you could just swap it the other way knowing that everything's backwards. Or just manually fix the ones used most often.
 

mattraehl

macrumors 6502
Feb 26, 2005
384
1
Are you sure they imported incorrectly? You can choose between First, Last or Last, First in the iPhone settings.

If it is incorrect, you could just swap it the other way knowing that everything's backwards. Or just manually fix the ones used most often.
Good point, it might just be confusion about the preference. OP should go into the contacts app and see if the top name is the first name and the bottom name the last. If so, it's just the preference, not the actual contacts being messed up.
 

quagmire

macrumors 604
Original poster
Apr 19, 2004
6,870
2,292
The last name is where the first name should be and first name is in the last name space. I tricked it with that whole sort by and display by thing, but that really isn't a desirable fix. :/
 

rosemary1

macrumors regular
Aug 9, 2011
226
4
The last name is where the first name should be and first name is in the last name space. I tricked it with that whole sort by and display by thing, but that really isn't a desirable fix. :/

Well, if you have a Mac you could sync the contacts via iCloud and switch 'em there.
 

lifeguard

macrumors 6502
Nov 25, 2010
318
0
Import them all into the iPhone, sync with pc, export to excel sheet copy column switch the column then re Import the spread sheet. Problem solved
 

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
Import them all into the iPhone, sync with pc, export to excel sheet copy column switch the column then re Import the spread sheet. Problem solved

It sounds like the names were entered wrong on the old phone. I'd do this, or any number of other solutions that let you fix them on a Mac or PC through Outlook, OS X Contacts, etc.
 

quagmire

macrumors 604
Original poster
Apr 19, 2004
6,870
2,292
Thanks for the tips everyone. Playing with the sort/display settings, we got it the way my parents wanted it to be.
 
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