By Joe Dolittle
OutlookPower reader Angel Haag asks:
I sure hope that you can assist me. I have been searching for this answer and can't seem to find it.
I am trying to print out my address book of clients where it shows ALL the fields -- ones that are filled in and ones that are empty -- for each contact.
I can go through the View process and actually see the contacts with all the empty fields, but when I go to print it, it only prints the fields that have something in them. PLEASE HELP!
Also, whatever the process is, will it differ between 2003 & 2007 versions of Outlook?
This is one of those classic cases where software tries to be smart and anticipate the needs of users. Most users don't want blank fields to print. In fact, many database programs have special features that allow blank fields to be collapsed just to prevent the printing of empty fields.
Unfortunately, where one user gets her way, another user wants it to work differently. While some programs expose every possible choice as an option or a preference, software designers have the very challenging job of balancing between adding features and options and creating too much complexity.
All this is my way of saying "You can't do that" in Outlook. But all is not lost for Angel. While Outlook doesn't support this feature by nature, there are a few hacks.
The first hack is crude in the extreme. Simply put a space in the blank fields. Although Outlook won't print all the fields with blanks in them, it will print most. It's a lot of extra work, but it does work.
Another approach is to export your contacts as a text file and then read that file into Excel or a database program like FileMaker. If you use FileMaker, you can create very customized reports that'll print exactly the way you'd like.
Have fun!
