95. Add a Person to Your Address Book
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
54 Configure a New Mail Account
SEE ALSO
100 Synchronize Your Information Using .Mac
Email
deserves
its reputation as an instant, easy-to-understand communication systembut without a simple way for you to keep track of people's email addresses, email is all but useless. Who has the memory to keep an entire catalog of cryptic, frequently changing addresses straight?
The answer, of course, is
a computer
.
Address Book is a small application that works as an adjunct to Mail but that is integrated throughout Mac OS X so that all its contentscontact
names
, phone
numbers
, email addresses, home page URLsare available to any application capable of using that information. As you use Mail, you can continually add names and addresses into Address Book with a single click, so that sending messages to the people you know becomes faster and easier all the time.
Each entry in Address Book is known as a
card
(or a
contact
). A card can contain nearly a
dozen
different kinds of information about a person, including a picture. A card can be for a person or a business (you make the distinction using a check box). At any time, you can edit a card by selecting it in Address Book and clicking the
Edit
button at the bottom of the window.
TIP
An additional way to organize your contacts is to use
groups
. Create a new
group
in Address Book by clicking the
+
button at the bottom of the
Group
column and enter a name for the new group that appears. You then populate the group by dragging cards into it. Now you can quickly send email to an entire group of people by simply typing the
name
of the group into the
To
field in Mail. The names in the group are automatically resolved, and the message is addressed to all the
members
of the group at once.
Hold down
Option
while creating a new group to create a
Smart Group
, which is a saved Spot light query defined on several useful criteria and automatically contains all matching cards.
95. Add a Person to Your Address Book
You can add contacts to Address Book from the Mail application, or you can enter all of a person's contact information manually. Either way, that information is immediately available to Mail and to the rest of your online applications.
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1.
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Open
Address Book
Navigate to the
Applications
folder in the Finder and double-click the
Address Book
icon. Alternatively, you can click the
Address Book
icon in the Dock.
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2.
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Create a New Contact
There are
+
buttons
underneath both the
Group
column on the left and the second
Name
column (which by default shows all the contacts in the
All
group). Click the
+
button under the
Name
column to create a new contact.
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3.
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Enter the Contact's Name and Title
In the right pane, a blank contact card appears. The name of each field appears in gray so that you know what is supposed to go in the fields.
TIP
You can assign a custom picture to any person's card in Address Book. Simply find a picture file in the Finder and drag it into the square picture area
next
to the person's name. You can do this whether or not you're in Edit mode. (You can tell whether you're in Edit mode by whether the
Edit
button below the card information is pressed.)
Type the person's first and last name. If the person is a business contact, enter their company name and business title as well. Use the
Tab
key to move between fields. Be sure to put the first and last name in the two separate fields provided for them rather than simply typing the whole name into the first field. Separating the contact's name helps Address Book
sort
the names properly; you can tell Address Book to alphabetize your contacts based on their first or last names in the
General
pane of the Address Book
Preferences
window.
TIP
If the card you're entering is for a company rather than a person, select the
Company
check box next to the picture and under the company name. This reverses the
positions
of the person's name and the company name, placing the company name in large bold
letters
.
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4.
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Add a Phone Number, Email Address, and Home Page
Each contact in your Address Book can have as many phone numbers, email addresses, and home pages associated with it as you want. The default template, which you are using now, has space for work and mobile phone numbers, a work email address, and a home page. You can add more of any of these pieces of information if you want or change the label on each field. For instance, you can change the
work
email address to a
home
address by selecting the new label from the drop-down list (click the up/down arrow icon next to the label to access the list of label options). When you have entered text into one of the fields, a
+
button appears next to the entry; click the
+
button to create space for a second entry of the same type. This way, you can create dozens of contact addresses for each person.
TIP
Select
Custom
from the label menu on any entry to type a custom label for the entry.
After you have finished specifying the information for a person, you can use Address Book to quickly access a person's home page, phone number, or email address. Click the label for one of these entries to see a contextual menu of appropriate options. An email entry gives you access to commands for sending email to the person or sending an automatic email with your new contact information if you should change it. If the person is a .Mac
user
, you can iChat with the person, visit his home page, or open his iDisk right from Address Book.
TIP
Click the label for a person's phone number and select
Large Type
from the contextual menu to show the address in huge letters across your screen; this can be very useful if you need to dial a phone that's across the room from your computer.
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5.
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Add Associates' Names
You can add the names of the person's
friends
, family members, assistants, managers, or any of several other relationships. Select the relationship you want to add from the list of label options, and type that person's name.
If the associate's name that you type matches any card in Address Book, you will later be able to jump to that associate's Address Book card by clicking the label and selecting the
Show "John Doe"
option from the contextual menu.
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6.
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Add an Instant Messaging ID
Address Book allows you to specify the instant messaging address or user ID for any contact. You can enter an AIM, Jabber, MSN, ICQ, or Yahoo! address. You will only be able to contact the person using iChat if you enter an AIM address, and then click the location label next to the Instant Messaging entry in the Address Book card, or click the green dot next to the person's picture (which indicates that he is online in iChat or AIM).
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7.
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Fill in the Mailing Address
Enter the information for the person's mailing address, using all the available fields that you know: street address, city, state, ZIP, and country.
Clicking the mailing address label later in Address Book and selecting
Map Of
from the contextual menu when you're in Safari pops up a map (using the MapQuest service) of that address.
TIP
You can use different
countries
' mailing address styles, if you want. Click the mailing address label and choose
Change Address Format
from the contextual menu; from the submenu, select the country for the format you want to use for that card. To change the format that is used globally for all cards, open the Address Book
Preferences
dialog box and click the
General
tab; select the country you live in from the
Address Format
menu.
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8.
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Finish Editing the Contact
When you're done editing the person's card, click the
Edit
button to exit Edit mode. This contact's card is added to Address Book and the contact's name appears in the
Name
column in the Address Book screen.
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9.
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Look Up a Person in Address Book
You can browse for a person's name
alphabetically
in the
Name
column in Address Book. Alternatively, if you know the person's first or last name (or, indeed, any other piece of information, such as the person's phone number or mailing address), type it into the
Search
box. As you type, only the cards with contents that match what you've typed appear in the
Name
column. When you've narrowed it down to a single card, that card appears in the right pane.
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10.
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Add a Person from Mail
Click the down arrow next to any person's name in the headers of an email message in Mail. Select
Add to Address Book
from the contextual menu to automatically create a new card with that person's name and email address. You can then select
Open in Address Book
from the same menu to go to the new card and add any further contact information you might know.
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