How does CiviCRM handle international mailing addresses with unusual formats?

Question

I'm working with a non-profit that is exploring CiviCRM as a successor to their old FileMaker database. I've been doing some experimenting with a demo site. One of the biggest problems with their existing FileMaker database is that international addresses don't all follow the same format as a US address.

What I mean by that, is US addresses all follow this:

[Street Address 1]
[Street Address 2 (if needed)]
[City], [State Code] [Zip]

This is problematic for countries without that same format.

I notice the fields all look the same style in CiviCRM. Is this problematic for users? I'm concerned both for data input issue as well as output, for example, trying to send out a mass mailing. Am I going to have issues with this as well?

I'm running CiviCRM on WordPress on a Digital Ocean Droplet.

Answer 1

You can control the address format in Administer menu » Localization » Address Settings, so your mailing labels generate how you'd like.

What CiviCRM does not currently do is print different mailing label formats based on the country of the record. I've got a proposal to a client who will fund this improvement if the proposal is accepted, but at this time I don't know. Feel free to connect with me on https://chat.civicrm.org (name is "junglebird") if you'd like to be kept in the loop.