State Field Blank for all customers in address book

I'm using the latest zen cart install, 1.3.8. I use Order Exporter for my customer to have a spreadsheet. She noticed the state field is blank. When I looked to see where the info is being pulled from (address_book) - the state field is blank on all my customer's records, but there is a entry_zone_id set.

When a customer signs up for a new account, I don't use a drop down table since we have out of country (non US) customers, and instead they type their state.

So, I have two problems - first I need to get her an export order file that has the state in it - I prefer a solution that somehow lets me in php admin find and join so that all the state fields are filled in.

Secondly, I would like to figure out where I need to make a correction to have something in the field.

The second way around this would be to modify the export order file (which I have done to include another piece of information) to put some type of join like for Order Total

order_total as v_total_cost
FROM ".TABLE_ORDERS." zo JOIN ".TABLE_ORDERS_PRODUCTS." zop
ON(zo.orders_id = zop.orders_id), ".TABLE_ORDERS_STATUS." zos
WHERE zos.orders_status_id != '3'
AND zo.orders_status = zos.orders_status_id
";

But I don't know what I would be joining from