Mac Kindergarten

Yesterday we looked at how to increase our screen space. Today we will take it one step further and create more space in our brain. Well, more like freeing up space for more important things.

Having trouble, remembering birthdays, telephone numbers, and so on? Don’t worry, meet the powerful combination of Address Book and iCal.

Address Book

Let’s start with Address Book. As the name indicates, it’s the application for storing all your contact information (e.g. name, birthday, phone numbers, addresses, …)

Data entry

First we need to enter the data, so launch Address Book by clicking its icon in the Dock.

You are presented with a 3-pane view. To the left, you see all groups, in the middle all names of the selected group and to the right the details of a selected name.Let’s enter some data. Click the “+” symbol below the name section.

After the click, you can start to add data right away. Enter first and last name, phone number, and so on. You will see that there is a selection option next to some entry fields (e.g. for the phone number). Use this to specify the details of the phone number (e.g. work number, home or mobile).

Sometimes you need more fields (e.g. you have a friends number to work, home and the mobile, too). Just fill in the 2 provided fields and a green plus will appear. Just click it to get more fields.

 

You can even select you own labels for your numbers. Just select Custom… from the list and enter your own label.

To enter a birthday for a person, select from the Card menu, choose Add Field and select Birthday. This adds a birthday field to the name.

Continue entering data until you are done. Click the “edit” button below the data-area to finish entering data. Click it again to edit data of an existing name.

To create a group, just click the “+” sign below the group window and enter a name for the group. Then just drag a name from the names-pane in the middle on to the group name to add this name to the group. You can select multiple names by holding down the command-key while clicking.

One more thing …

Note, that deleting a group does NOT delete the contacts inside this group, the remain in your Address Book and can be view via the “All” group.

This is it for now, explore Address Book and play around with it. Later today, we will start using iCal, Leopard calender application to automatically display birthdays in our daily calender.

Stay tuned.

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Tags: Address Book, data, iCal

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Utilities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.