Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Managing Your Contacts
One of the paradoxes of modern life is that as your contact information becomes more important, you store less
and less of that information in the easiest database system of them all — your memory. That is, instead of mem-
orizing phone numbers like you used to, you now store your contact info electronically. When you think about
it, this isn't exactly surprising because it's not just a landline number that you have to remember for each person
anymore. It might also be a cell number, an instant-message handle, an e-mail address, a website, a Twitter user-
name, or a physical address.
That's a lot to remember, so it makes sense to go the electronic route. For most Mac users, “electronic” means
the Contacts application. Initially, this app seems basic enough, but it's actually loaded with useful features that
can help you organize and get the most out of the contact- management side of your life.
Saving a person's contact information
Entering a person's contact data by hand into a new Contacts card is tedious at the best of times, so it helps if
you can find a faster way to do it. For example, if you can cajole a contact into sending his or her contact data
electronically, you can add that data with just a couple of mouse moves.
What do I mean when I talk about sending contact data electronically? Long ago, the world's contact-manage-
ment gurus came up with a standard file format for contact data: the vCard. It's a kind of digital business card
that exists as a separate file. People can pass this data along by attaching their (or someone else's) card to an e-
mail message. (You learn how to do this with your own contact data in the next section.)
If you get a message with contact data, you see an icon for the VCF file, as shown in Figure 4.1.
You now have two ways to get this data into your Contacts:
In most cases you can simply double-click the vCard file icon.
If this doesn't work, right-click the vCard
file icon, and then choose Open With →Contacts.
Click Contacts in the Dock.
Click and drag the vCard file icon, then drop it inside the Contacts window, as
shown in Figure 4.2. If Contacts isn't running, you can automatically launch it by dragging the vCard icon and
dropping it on the Contacts icon in the Dock.
