7.2 Transferring Contacts to the iPod

If you use a calendar/address book/notes program ”which nerds call personal information management (PIM) programs ”you're not alone. With each passing day, more people switch to a digital method of organizing their calendar, phone book, and note pad. Indeed, a whole generation has never done it any other way.

Some of these PIMs can transfer their data to a Palm or PocketPC organizer. This notion of "yes, you can take it with you, especially without having to retype it" helped propel the popularity of handheld computers into the stratosphere.

If you use a current version of one of the popular PIM programs ”like Palm Desktop, Microsoft Outlook, Entourage, or the Address Book programs that come with Windows and Mac OS X ”you can transfer your contact list to the iPod. There are a number of ways to do this, either manually or automatically, with shareware or software. This chapter covers all those methods . (And if you have a Mac running OS X 10.2 or later, see Chapter 10, which looks at Apple's iSync program.)

Even with manual methods, you have at least a couple of different ways to get those addresses on the iPod. If you want every single contact in your desktop program to appear on your iPod, the process can be very quick and uncomplicated.

NOTE

To use the Contacts feature, you need to have your iPod set up for use as a FireWire disk. See Chapter 11 for details.

Furthermore, any time you copy contacts onto the iPod from any program, you need to unmount it (remove its icon from the computer screen) and then disconnect the FireWire Cable when the "OK to Disconnect" message (or iPod main menu) appears onscreen. 2003-and-later iPod models are ready to go right away, but older models take a moment to reboot (this is what the iPod's doing when you see the Apple logo on the display screen) before you can choose Contacts from the Extras menu.