Joshua Zimmerman

Address Book is everything you wanted in a program that keeps track of your contacts. It's integrated with iChat, Mail, Safari, and can also be used to export your contacts to a Palm handheld, iPod, or bluetooth enabled phone. This guide will show you how to create new contacts and some cool features you may not know about. Seriously, if you're not using Address Book, and you're using OS X, then you're losing out on one of the best features possible, and something that can save you hours of time in the long run, not to mention stress on your mind.

Adding a Contact

Adding a contact is as easy as typing in information. Open up Address Book, which by default is in your Applications folder. You'll see three columns - the left one is called Group, the middle one is called Name, and the one on the right is where your contact info shows up. If you click on the little + sign in the middle column you'll make a new contact. By default you can now edit the contact information. If you ever wish to go back and re-edit it, just click on the contact you want to change and than hit the Edit button.

Add in all the information you want. I primarily use Address Book to hold all my e-mail contacts because Mail and iChat look in your address book for info. Say, for example, I need to know the e-mail address for John Doe. Instead of trying to remember his e-mail address, I just start typing in his name and Mail will put his e-mail address in for me. This saves you from remembering e-mail address.

Groups

You can subcatagorize your contacts into Groups for easier organization - this also gives you the ability to send an e-mail to everyone on the Group at once. To make a new group, click on the + button at the bottom of the Group column. Once you have made a new Group you can drag your contacts from the All group directory and drag them into your groups. Deleting things from your Groups does NOT delete them from your Address Book. You can only delete something if you delete it from the All group. If you wish to send an e-mail to everyone in a Group just type the name of the Group into the e-mail field within Mail. It should add the entire Group for you.

Exporting Your Contacts

You can export your contacts to other applications using the vCard standard. Just click on a contact or a group and go up to File and down to Export Group vCard. That's about it. You can do the same for importing vCards from other programs, such as Palm Desktop.

If you'd like to sync Address Book with your iPod, Palm handheld, or Bluetooth enabled phone you'll need to use the Apple program iSync. This free program can be found on newer macs or can be downloaded for free using Software Update.

This covers the basics of Address Book. When you use it with Mail, iCal, iSync, and Safari it's a very useful tool.

-Joshua