I apologise for expressing myself so badly. When I referred to firstname and second name I really meant firstname and lastname. As I never deal with the second or middle name I always think of the last name as the second name.

So I have stored just the firstname and last(or family)name. I would like to sort them lastname, firstname but when I do this I get some listed that way and some still listed firstname lastname. This happens despite the fact that each contact is individually formatted as lastname. firstname.

If I set the global order as lastname, firstname will this take precedence over the individual setting or what?