Whether it’s working with
clients, colleagues, or suppliers, contacting people is a big part of
most people’s working day. It can also be a time-consuming part of your
day if you’re constantly looking up information about people, whether
it’s their phone numbers, physical addresses, email addresses, web addresses, and so on. Streamlining these tasks—a process known as contact management—can save you lots of time and make your work more efficient.
Windows Vista’s calls its contact management feature, appropriately
enough, Windows Contacts. In previous versions of Windows, you stored
contact data in the Address Book, which was a single .wab file.
Single files can get corrupted, of course, and if that happened with
the Address Book, your contacts were toast unless you had a recent
backup. Vista removes much of this risk by implementing Contacts as a subfolder that resides within your main user account folder (its location is %UserProfile%\Contacts). As you can see in Figure 1, inside the Contacts folder, Vista stores each contact as a separate file that uses the new Contact File (.contact) file type.
The Contacts folder gives you a fair
amount of flexibility for dealing with your ever-growing network of
coworkers, customers, friends, and family. Yes, you can use Contacts
to store mundane information such as phone numbers and addresses, but
with more than three dozen predefined fields available, you can preserve
the minutiae of other people’s lives: their birthdays and
anniversaries, the names of their spouses and children, and even their
web page addresses. Even better, Contacts enables you to reduce
the number of steps it takes to perform many tasks. For example, if you
want to send an email to someone in your Contacts folder,
rather than firing up Windows Mail, creating the email message, and then
adding the contact, you can perform all these actions at once by
initiating the email directly from the Contacts folder.
The next few sections take you inside the Contacts
folder and show you how to add and edit contacts; create contact
groups; import and export contact data; and email and phone contacts.
Before getting started, note that Vista gives you six (!) ways to
display the Contacts folder:
Select Start, All Programs, Windows Contacts.
Select Start, click your username, and then double-click Contacts.
Press Windows Logo+R (or select Start, All Programs, Accessories, Run) to open the Run dialog box, type wab, and click OK.
In Windows Mail, select Tools, Windows Contacts (you can also press Ctrl+Shift+C or click the Contacts button in the toolbar).
In Windows Calendar, select View, Contacts.
In Windows Fax and Scan, select Tools, Contacts.
1. Creating a New Contact
As you’ll see a bit later, Vista starts you off with a single file in the Contacts folder: a Contact file based on your user account. To make the Contacts
folder useful, you have to populate it with your own contacts. Vista
gives you four ways to go about this: creating a contact from an email
message; creating a contact from scratch; importing contacts from
another program or file format; and creating a contact group. The next
four sections discuss these methods in detail.
Creating a Contact from a Windows Mail Message
If you have a message in Windows Mail from a person that deserves a spot in your Contacts
folder, you can use that message to create a bare-bones contact that
stores just the sender’s name and email address. In Windows Mail,
right-click a message from the sender, and then click Add Sender to
Contacts. Windows Mail immediately creates a new Contact file for the
sender.
Caution
Windows Mail is configured with a truly annoying default setting: Each person you reply to is automatically added to the Contacts
folder. Dumb! It’s not unusual to have only a minimal connection with
some or even most of the people who email us. Think how often an email
“relationship” with someone consists of just an initial message and a
reply. Putting these relative strangers into your Contacts folder is
therefore a waste of space that will only slow you down. Tell Windows
Mail to forgo this brain-dead behavior by selecting Tools, Options,
displaying the Send tab, and then deactivating the Automatically Put
People I Reply to In My Contacts List check box.
Tip
Some people automatically include with their email messages a version of their contact data in an attached file called a vCard (.vcf), which acts as a kind of electronic business card. If you receive such a message, you can add the person and their contact data to your Contacts.
Click the vCard icon and then click Open to display the contact data.
In the Summary tab, click Add to My Contacts to create a new Contact
file for the person.
Creating a Contact from Scratch
If you need to perform your contact creation duties by hand, here are the steps to follow:
1. | In
the Contacts folder, click New Contact. (You can also right-click the
folder and then click New, Contact.) Vista displays a blank contact
properties sheet.
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2. | In the Name and E-mail tab, fill in at least the contact’s first name and last name.
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3. | Use
the Full Name list to select how you want the contact’s full name
displayed: First Last (for example, Paul McFedries); Last First
(McFedries Paul); or Last, First (McFedries, Paul).
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4. | Type the contact’s email address and then click Add.
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5. | Repeat step 4 if the contact has other email addresses.
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6. | Use the Home, Work, Family, and Notes tabs to add other contact data, as required.
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7. | Click OK.
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Importing Contacts
If you have a large number of contacts, adding
them individually by hand is no one’s idea of a good time. Fortunately,
if you have the contact data in the appropriate format (more on that in a
second), Vista enables you to import that data in one operation. Which
formats are “appropriate”? Fortunately, Vista supports four common
contacts formats:
| CSV | This
is the Comma Separated Values format, and it consists of a text file
with each contact on its own line, and each piece of contact data
separated by a comma. In most cases, the first line in the CSV file
lists the field names, separated by commas. |
| LDIF | This
is the LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) Data Interchange
Format. If your contacts reside on an LDAP server and you have client
server to access that server, the client should have a feature that
exports the contacts to an LDIF file. |
| vCard | This is the vCard format where the data for each contact resides in a .vcf
file. A vCard is often used as a kind of electronic business card. Many
contact management programs enable you to export contact data as a
collection of vCard files. |
| WAB | This the Windows Address Book File format, which is the format used by Outlook Express. |
If you have contact data in one of these formats, follow these steps to import that data into Windows Contacts:
1. | In Windows Contacts, click Import to display the Import to Windows Contacts dialog box, shown in Figure 2.
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2. | Select the contact file format you want to use.
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3. | Select Import. Vista prompts you to specify the file or files you want to import.
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4. | How you proceed from here depends on the file format you’re using:
For LDIF, vCard, and WAB, select the files and then click Open. Skip to step 6. For CSV, type the file path and filename (or click Browse to select it) and then click Next. Proceed with step 5.
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5. | In the CSV Import dialog box, activate the check box beside each field you want to map, and then click Finish.
Note
In the CSV Import dialog box, the Text Field
column tells you the names of the fields in the CSV file, and the
Contacts Field column tells you the corresponding field that Vista will
use to create the contacts. If a field mapping is incorrect, click the
field and then click Change Mapping. Use the Change Mapping dialog box
to select the correct Contacts field (or deactivate Import This Field to
skip it), and then click OK.
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6. | In the final dialog box, click Close.
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Note
If you need to use your Windows Contacts
entries in another program, Vista enables you to export them. Click
Export in the taskbar to open the Export Windows Contacts dialog box.
Choose either the CSV or vCard file format, and then click Export. If
you choose the CSV format, Vista will ask you to specify which fields
you want to export.
Creating a Contact Group
As you probably know, if you need to send an
email message to two or more people, you just add everyone’s address to
the message window, in the To, Cc, or Bcc field (separate each address
with a semicolon or comma). However, what if you find yourself emailing
the same group of people over and over?
It could be the team you work with at the office, a collection of
people working on the same project, or a group of friends you share
jokes and other e-tidbits with.
A better way to go about the whole group email thing is to create a contact group:
a Contact file that contains two or more contacts. When you create an
email message and specify a contact group as the recipient, Windows Mail
sends the message to everyone in the group. The members of the group
can be either other Contacts or people that you add for the group only.
Follow these steps to create a contact group:
1. | In the Contacts folder, select New Contact Group. A properties sheet for the contact group appears.
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2. | Type a group name.
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3. | Use any of the following three techniques to add members to the group (Figure 3 shows a group with a few members added):
To add an existing contact, click Add
to Contact Group to display the Add Members to Contact Group dialog
box. Hold down Ctrl and click each contact you want to add. When you’re
done, click Add. To add a new contact,
click Create New Contact. Use the properties sheet that appears to enter
the contact’s particulars, and then click OK. Vista creates a new
contact for the person and adds the person to the contact group. To add a member without creating a contact, type the contact name and email address, and then click Create for Group Only.
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4. | Display the Contact Group Details tab.
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5. | In
most cases, you won’t need to fill in data such as the address and
phone number for a contact group. However, you might want to add text to
the Notes field or specify a website address, if applicable.
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6. | Click OK.
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2. Communicating with a Contact
The Contacts folder is useful as a repository for contact data that you can refer to as needed. However, Contacts is also useful as a shortcut method for communicating with your contacts (as opposed to using Windows Mail). The Contacts folder gives you three ways to communicate with a contact:
Emailing a Contact—
Select the contact and then click either the E-Mail button in the
taskbar or the link to the contact’s email address in the Preview pane.
(You can also right-click the contact and then select Action, Send
E-mail.) Vista displays a New Message window addressed to the contact.
Note
If the contact has multiple email addresses,
clicking the taskbar’s E-Mail button sends the message to the address
that you have designated as Preferred. To change the Preferred address,
open the contact’s properties sheet (select the contact and then click
Edit), select the address you prefer to use, and then click Set
Preferred. To send a
message to a non-Preferred address, either click the address link in
the Preview pane or right-click the contact, select Action, Send E-mail
To, and then select the address you want to use.
Phoning a Contact— Right-click the contact and then select Action, Call This Contact to open the New Call dialog box, shown in Figure 4. Use the Phone Number list to select the number you want to call, and then click Call.
Visiting a Contact’s Web Site—
If you’ve specified either a business or home website for a contact,
you can visit that site by selecting the contact and then clicking the
website’s link in the Preview pane. Alternatively, open the contact’s
properties sheet, display the tab containing the website address
(business or home), and then click Go.
3. Working with Contacts
If you need to make changes to an existing
contact, you have to open the contact’s properties sheet, and Vista
gives you three ways to do this:
The next few sections take you through a few more useful techniques for working with contacts.
Tip
By default, Vista sorts the Contacts
folder by the values in the Name field, which corresponds to the Full
Name field in each contact’s properties sheet. If for each contact you
selected either the Last, First or Last First format in the Full Name
field, the Contacts list will be sorted as it should: by last name.
However, if you selected the First Last format in the Full Name field,
or if you’ve mixed up the formats, the Contacts folder will not
sort properly. To work around this problem, right-click a field header
and then click Last Name to add the Last Name field to the folder. Click
the Last Name header to sort all your contacts by last name.
Changing a Contact’s Picture
By default, Vista
supplies each new contact with a generic picture. If you have a picture
of the contact, you can use that image instead of the generic one.
Follow these steps:
1. | Open the contact’s properties sheet.
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2. | In
the Name and E-mail tab, click the contact’s picture and then click
Change Picture. The Select a Picture for Contact dialog box appears.
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3. | Select the picture you want to use and then click Set. Vista adds the picture to the properties sheet, as shown in Figure 5.
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Filling In Your Own Contact Data
I mentioned earlier that Vista automatically
creates a contact for your username. This is a bare-bones contact file
that contains only your username in the First Name field and your user
account picture as the contact picture. You’ll see in the next section
that you can send your contact data to other people as an electronic
business card. Before you do that, of course, you need to fill in your
contact data with the data you want others to see:
1. | Open the properties sheet for your contact.
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2. | Fill in the data that you want included in your electronic business card.
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3. | Click OK.
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4. | Right-click your contact file.
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5. | If
you see This Is Me in the shortcut menu, it means Vista already knows
this contact contains your data, so exit the shortcut menu. Otherwise,
click Set As My Contact to tell Vista that the contact file contains
your data.
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Tip
Even
if you don’t want to send your contact data electronically, it’s still
useful to add at least your email address to your contact data. That
way, you can easily include your address in an email message or in a
contact group.
Sending Your Contact Data as an Electronic Business Card
You saw earlier that if you receive an electronic business card (.vcf)
file as an attachment, it’s very easy to add that person’s data to your
Contacts list. For that reason, many people set up a contact file for
themselves and then routinely send the data as an electronic business
card.
If you want to do this only occasionally,
right-click your contact file and then click Send Contact. This opens
the New Message window with your contact data attached as a .vcf file.
If you want to include your electronic business
card on all outgoing messages, follow these steps to set this up in
Windows Mail:
1. | In Windows Mail, select Tools, Options to display the Options dialog box.
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2. | Display the Compose tab.
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3. | In the Business Cards section, activate the Mail check box.
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4. | Use
the list beside the Mail check box to select your contact file. (Note
that after you select the contact, you can click Edit to open its
properties sheet and make changes.)
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5. | Click OK.
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Now every message you send will include your contact data as a .vcf
file attachment (although you don’t see this attachment as you work in
the message window). If you don’t want Windows Mail to send the business
card for a particular message, pull down the Insert menu and click the
My Business Card command to deactivate it.
