Organizing Your Address Book

[Previous] [Next]

Apart from identities (discussed in "Using Identities"), Address Book provides two tools for organizing records: groups and folders.

Groups are collections of contacts gathered under a group name. Each contact in the group retains its individual record and can belong to any number of groups. You can continue addressing e-mail to group members individually, but you can also broadcast an e-mail to all members of the group, simply by supplying the group name as the addressee.

Folders can be convenient for display purposes, especially if your address book file is large. Folders allow you to view subsets of your file. A contact can belong to only one folder at a time. Note that you cannot address an e-mail to all members of a folder by specifying the folder name.

Displaying the Folders And Groups Pane

Adding the Folders And Groups pane to Address Book's display, which you can do by choosing Folders And Groups from the View menu, lets you see your groups and folders at a glance and provides an easy way to navigate. Figure 17-5 shows Address Book with the Folders And Groups pane displayed.

click to view at full size.

Figure 17-5. The Folders And Groups pane lets you see the structure of your address book at a glance.

Just as you might move files between folders by using the Windows Explorer Folders bar, so can you move Address Book entries with the help of the Folders And Groups pane. For example, to move the record for Jeff Adell from the Work: MS folder (its current location) to the Personal folder, you simply drag the entry from the right pane and drop it on Personal in the left pane. Dragging a name into a folder moves it into the folder, but dragging a name to a group copies it to the group, leaving it in its original location as well. Note, however, that you cannot copy an address book record by holding down the Ctrl key as you drag.

Creating, Populating, and Modifying a Group

To create a group, click the New button and choose New Group. You'll see the dialog box shown in Figure 17-6.

click to view at full size.

Figure 17-6. In the properties dialog box for a new group, you can add members to the group as well as specify information that applies to the group as a whole.

On the Group tab of this dialog box, provide a name for the new group. In the fields on the Group Details tab, you can (optionally) enter information—address, telephone numbers, notes, and Web site—that applies to the group as a whole. (Note, however, that information you enter here does not get propagated to the individual group records.)

You can also use the Group tab to begin populating your group. To add a person who already has a record in your address book, click Select Members. The dialog box that appears, exemplified by Figure 17-7, on the following page, lists all of your address book's current members and groups. To add someone to a group, click his or her name in the left pane, and then click the Select button. (To select multiple names, hold down Ctrl while clicking.)

Note that you can add groups to groups. To make all members of Group A members of Group B, for example, first create Group A. Then simply add Group A to Group B the same way you would add an individual to Group B.

click to view at full size.

Figure 17-7. To add someone to a group, click his or her name in the left pane, and then click Select.

If you accidentally add the wrong person to a group, simply select that person's name in the Members box (on the right in Figure 17-7) and press the Delete key. This has no effect on the person's underlying address book record.

If you're not sure whether a person belongs in a group, select that person's name and click Properties. You can then read the person's entire address book record and make up your mind.

To add a person to a group who doesn't yet have an address book record, click the New Contact button. You can do that either in the screen shown in Figure 17-6 or the one shown in Figure 17-7. Either action creates a new address book record.

To modify a group after you've created it, select its name in any Address Book view. (The Folders And Groups pane can help you do this.) Then click Properties on the toolbar.

TIP
An easy way to add members to an existing group is to display the Folders And Groups pane, and then drag names from the right pane to the group name in the left pane.

Creating a Folder

To create a new folder, click New on the toolbar, select New Folder, and provide a name. Note that your new folder will be immediately subordinate to the current identity. You can't nest folders within other folders.



Running Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Running Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
ISBN: 1572318384
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2000
Pages: 317

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net