Windows 7 : Using Windows Live Contacts

You can use Windows Live Contacts to create a virtual address book of individual contacts and groups of contacts. Any contact you create can have a name and email address associated with it as well as full details on home and work contact information. You can also add instant messaging addresses, notes, and digital IDs. When you use Windows Live Contacts to create contract categories, you can send email to everyone in the contact category simply by specifying the name of the contact category in your email message.

NOTE

Don’t confuse Windows Live Contacts with Windows Contacts. Windows Live Contacts is part of the Windows Live service and its desktop version is accessed through Windows Live Mail. Windows Contacts is the contact program introduced with Windows Vista. Windows Contacts is a special view for Windows Explorer that is available when you access the Contacts folder within your personal profile. Windows Contacts stores individual contacts and groups of contacts as separate files. Contact files for individuals are saved as .contact files. Contact files for groups are saved as .group files. In your profile, you’ll find these files in the Contacts folder. You can use Windows Contacts to create contacts and contact groups for your use and reference. These contacts will be separate from your Windows Live Contacts.

1. Getting to Know Windows Live Contacts

Windows Live Contacts is integrated into Windows Live Mail. You can start Windows Live Contacts from within Windows Live Mail by clicking the Contacts button in the left pane. From within Windows Live Contacts, shown in Figure 1, you can organize your contacts, add new contacts and contact categories, import contacts (from CSV, VCF, WAB, and more formats), and export contacts (to CSV and VCF). You display and configure individual contacts using a dialog box that is actually quite similar to the old Windows Address Book Contacts Properties dialog box. The big change is that you have view selection buttons in a left pane instead of tabs for accessing various categories of information related to the selected contact.

Figure 1. Creating and managing your contacts

Windows Live Contacts is designed to replace other storage mechanisms for personal contacts, including Windows Contacts. You can use Windows Live Contacts to keep track of people and organizations by creating contacts for them. Each contact contains the information for one person or organization. When you need to look up a friend’s email address or phone number, you can open Windows Live Contacts and find it there. When you want to take notes about a contact, you can store the notes along with the contact.

Windows Live Contacts also functions as the address book for Windows Live Mail. When you create an email message in Windows Live Mail, you select recipients from your contacts list. Even if you don’t use Windows Live Mail as your email program, you can still use Windows Live Contacts to store information about people and organizations. Use Windows Live Contacts to keep track of all the people and organizations with which you communicate.

Any Windows Live Contacts you create, modify, or delete in the related desktop program are automatically created, modified, or deleted in your contacts in the Windows Live service and vice versa. For this to work, you must sign in by clicking the Sign In link in the upper right of the Windows Live Mail main window.

Synchronization occurs when Windows Live Mail checks for new messages, which occurs every 30 minutes by default. You can change the synchronization options by following these steps:

1. In Windows Live Mail, click the Menus button on the toolbar, and then click Options.

2. On the General tab, ensure the “Check for new messages every” checkbox is selected and then specify the desired interval.

3. Click OK to save your settings.

NOTE

When you are working with the Mail view in Windows Live Mail, you can manually synchronize all email, calendar, and contact data with the Windows Live Service by clicking the Sync button or by clicking the Sync Options button and then selecting Everything (Ctrl-F5).

2. What’s in a Live Contact?

You can store as much or as little information as you like about each contact. Windows Live Mail offers you the ability to store email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, family information, website addresses, and notes, all associated with your contact.

You can store personal, work and other email addresses for a contact, and set a single email address as the primary address for your contact. The primary email address is the one Windows Live Mail uses when you want to send someone an email quickly, without selecting from the different email addresses stored for the contact you selected.

You can store separate home and work contact numbers for phone, fax, and cell/pager. Windows Live Mail also offers you the ability to store personal and family information about your contact. The categories include a contact’s nickname, significant other, birthday, and anniversary information. This can help you considerably if you try to keep track of your contact’s personal information for sending cards or gifts, or for other personal reasons. You also have the ability to keep notes associated with a contact, making it easy to find specific information you have noted about a particular contact.

3. Creating Live Contacts for Individuals

Windows Live Contacts allows you to create contacts in one of two ways. You can use the Quick Add function to quickly enter basic information about a personal contact or you can use the standard add function to create a contact with detailed information. Any Windows Live Contacts you create in the related desktop program are automatically copied to your contacts in the Windows Live service and vice versa.

To quickly add a new personal contact, follow these steps:

1. In Windows Live Mail, click Contacts in the left pane. This opens Windows Live Contacts.

2. Click New on the toolbar or press Ctrl-Shift-N. This opens the Add a Contact dialog box like the one shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Creating a new contact

1. The Quick Add view is selected by default. Enter the contact’s first and last name. This sets the name under which the contact will be filed and the display name that will be used in Windows Live Mail.

2. Type an email address and home phone number for the contact.

3. Optionally, enter a company name.

4. Click Add Contact to create the contact.

To create a new contact with detailed information, follow these steps:

1. In Windows Live Mail, click Contacts in the left pane. This opens Windows Live Contacts.

2. Click New on the toolbar or press Ctrl-Shift-N. This opens the Add a Contact dialog box.

3. On the Contact page, type the name information for the contact by doing the following:

   • Enter the contact’s first and last name. This sets the name under which the contact will be filed and the display name that will be used in Windows Live Mail.

   • Optionally, enter a middle name or middle initial for the contact.

   • Optionally, enter a nickname for the contact. If you specify a nickname, this is the name under which the contact will be filed and the display name that will be used in Windows Live Mail.

4. Enter an email address or addresses for the contact in the fields provided. The personal email address you add is set automatically as the preferred email address. The preferred email address is the default for Windows Live Mail. If you add multiple email addresses to a contact, you can use the Primary E-Mail Address list to set the preferred email address.

5. On the Personal page, use the options provided to enter the home contact information, including the street address, city, state, and postal code, as well as phone and fax. You can also enter the contact’s personal website address.

6. On the Work page, use the options provided to enter the work contact information, including the street address, city, state, and postal code, as well as work phone, other phone and pager numbers. You can also enter the contact’s business website address.

7. On the IM page, enter the contact’s Windows Live Messenger address or other instant messaging address.

8. On the Notes page, enter any additional notes about the contact.

9. Click Add Contact to create the contact.

4. Importing and Exporting Contacts

You can import contacts from the address books of other programs, including Office Outlook and Windows Contacts. As contacts you import are not deleted from their original location, you are still able to use contacts in the original program.

To import contacts from Office Outlook, follow these steps:

1. In Windows Live Contacts, click the Menus button or press Alt-M.

2. Click Import and then click Microsoft Office Outlook Address Book.

3. Windows Live Contacts will begin importing the contacts from Microsoft Office. When it finishes, click OK.

To import contacts from Windows Contacts, follow these steps:

1. In Windows Live Contacts, click the Menus button or press Alt-M.

2. Click Import and then click Address Book For Current Windows Users.

3. Windows Live Contacts will begin importing the contacts from Windows Contacts. When it finishes, click OK.

You can export contacts from the address book in Windows Live Contacts so that you can use the contacts in other programs. At the time of this writing, two export formats were supported: vCards in .VCF format and .CSV (lists of comma-separated values) format. Contacts you export are not deleted from Windows Live Contacts.

To export contacts from Windows Live Contacts, follow these steps:

1. In Windows Live Contacts, click the Menus button or press Alt-M.

2. Click Export and then click the desired export format.

3. Use the Browse For Folder dialog box to select a save location for the .VCF or .CSV file.

4. A .VCF or .CSV file is created in the location you select.

5. Import this file into another program, such as Office Outlook.

5. Creating Contact Categories

In addition to creating contacts for individuals, you can create Contact Categories, which combine multiple individual contacts into a single group. Creating a contact category enables you to send email to many people at once. If you send an email message to a contact category, it will be sent to everyone you added to the category. In this way, sending email to a contact category can be a lot easier than adding names one at a time to an email message, especially if you often send messages to the same group of people.

You can create a contact category by following these steps:

1. In Windows Live Mail, click Contacts in the left pane. This opens Windows Live Contacts.

2. In the left pane, click the “Create a new category” link that appears under the list of predefined categories such as All Contacts, Buddies, and Coworkers.

3. In the Create a New Category dialog box, shown in Figure 3, enter a category name, such as Bridge Club or Golf Team.

4. Click the contacts you want to add to the category. As you click contact names, the contact’s display name is entered into a semicolon-separated list. Alternatively, you can enter the email address of a contact directly in the list. Just make sure each entry is separated with a semicolon.

5. Click Save. If you entered email addresses directly and one or more of the email addresses is not already associated with a contact, a new contact is created automatically. You’ll likely want to edit the contact information to make it more complete. To do this, simply double-click the contact entry, enter the desired information and then click Save.

Figure 3. Creating a contact category

NOTE

As with email addresses, you can enter contact category names in the To, Cc, or Bcc fields in an email message. Contact categories are used internally by Windows Live Mail. When you send a message to a category, Windows Live Mail will list each individual email address.