Sync problems with single-name contacts

Well if Steve can have a rant then so can I! Is anyone else having a problem with single name contacts syncing to their iPhone?

The problem is simple: I have a contact on my iPhone, e.g. “Mum”, which is filled in as the First Name in Contacts. The Last Name is blank. That’s the way I want it.

The contact is also set up *exactly* the same way within Address Book. I sync with my Mac a few times, and everything seems fine. Then all of a sudden, on some random sync, the name will change from “Mum” to “Mum Radford”. Maddening!

I thought it was a problem with syncing to Google through Address Book, so I turned that off. Nope. Still happening.

The problem

Eventually, I worked out the what was wrong – it’s not the Address Book, my iPhone, Google, or any sort of sync issue. It’s Apple Mail. Every time I receive an email, Mail stores the email address in its Previous Recipients database. When I start typing an email, it populates the To: field with a series of suggestions, which I find quite handy.

But here’s where Apple Mail tries to be a bit too clever for my own good. My Mum has her email address set to send as “ Radford”, so Mail notices the same email address within my Address Book, but with a missing Last Name. It then helpfully completes it for me within Address Book, via Previous Recipients. Apparently this feature of Mail has been around since OS X 10.2 (Jaguar).

So there’s no sync issue with the iPhone – it’s between Apple’s built-in applications in OS X.

The fix (1)

There is a workaround: Stop Mail updating Previous Recipients. Enter this command into the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.mail SuppressAddressHistory -bool true

(I originally found this defaults write command here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8633154&tstart=0)

This will freeze my Previous Recipients list within Mail, and leave the iPhone and Address Book to do their own thing, sync-wise. However, being a fussy bugger, I like my Previous Recipients being updated – it’s handy for a lot of email contacts that don’t have an entry in my Address Book.

The fix (2)

So my solution? Add a period as the surname – so “Mum” is now “Mum .” It looks a little ugly, but it’s fairly unobtrusive and won’t be updated to “Mum Radford”.

Yes, it’s kludgy, but it’s the best I can come up with. And yes again, lucky Apple users, this is a Mac-only problem. It’s not quite enough to make me use Outlook though…

Does anyone have a better workaround?