Tag: Address Book

In Mac OS X Lion the British Virgin Islands are still missing in the list of supplied countries in the “Address Book.app” application. We are either too small or too beautiful!

Adding the approbriate country information requires administative privileges and is done by editing system files. As always keep a backup of the files involved in case You have to start over.

Close “Address Book.app”. Copy the address format definition file from /System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBook.framework/Versions/A/Resources/
ABAddressFormats.plist to a temporary location like the desktop.

Open this copy with a text editor capable of displaying .plist files in XML format. I am using Textmate.

Locate the entry for the US Virgin Islands with country code “vi”. In the Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 file the start is at line number 5928.

	<key>vi</key>
	<dict>
	...
	<dict/>

Copy and paste the following XML code before.

<key>vg</key>
<dict>
	<key>City</key>
	<string>City</string>
	<key>COUNTRY</key>
	<string>British Virgin Islands</string>
	<key>Country</key>
	<string>Country</string>
	<key>EDIT_FORMAT</key>
	<string>Street City State ZIP Country</string>
	<key>EDIT_WEIGHTS</key>
	<dict>
		<key>City</key>
		<string>0.5</string>
		<key>ZIP</key>
		<string>0.5</string>
	</dict>
	<key>FORMAT</key>
	<string>Street
City State ZIP
Country</string>
	<key>kbdSettings</key>
	<dict>
		<key>State</key>
		<dict>
			<key>caps</key>
			<string>Word</string>
			<key>fmt</key>
			<string>Alpha</string>
			<key>suggest</key>
			<string>never</string>
		</dict>
	</dict>
	<key>PHONETIC_COUNTRY</key>
	<string>Phonetic British Virgin Islands</string>
	<key>State</key>
	<string>Island</string>
	<key>Street</key>
	<string>Street</string>
	<key>STREET_NUMBER_BEFORE_NAME</key>
	<string>YES</string>
	<key>URL_FORMAT</key>
	<string>Street, City, State, ZIP, Country</string>
	<key>ZIP</key>
	<string>ZIP</string>
</dict>

Save the edited file under a new file name.

Replace /System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBook.framework/Versions/A/Resources/
ABAddressFormats.plist with this amended file.