Two Tips for Leopard’s Address Book
A quick fix for the fields taken out of Leopard’s Address Book template and an even quicker way to get information out of an email into an Address Book card.
Restore Address Book’s missing fields
It’s always the little things that rankle the most, isn’t it? Here is the new Address Book in Leopard, with nice new features 
like built-in Google Maps searches and whatnot.
But I find myself more distressed by the disappearance of the Job Title and URL fields from Address Book’s default card template. In Tiger they were there; now they are gone. Why?
Luckily you don’t need to be a hardcore Terminal-head to get them back. Open up Address Book’s Preferences and select the Template pane. See how they have gone?
Select the Add Field dialog box:
Then select Job Title so that it is ticked (and why not the URL field while you are there?):
Then enjoy carefully distinguishing again within a company between the people whom you need to respect and everyone else:
Quickly add information to a contact
macOSXHints is running a tip on using the new “data detector” in Mail to quickly create iCal events and to-dos. It points out that hovering the mouse over a name or details of an event produces a drop box with the option to add it to Address Book or iCal.
But there is something even smarter lurking here. If you block all a contact’s information before you hover over the name (for example), the data detector pastes all the information into the new contact’s notes field:
Now I have the information I need about Greg Welch’s (developer of the MailRecent and MailFollowUp plugins — soon to be Leopard-ready) in the notes, where I can quickly drag it into the appropriate fields. I can even record his Job Title now that I have added the field to my template!
This way you get the lot in one hit, and don’t need to switch backwards and forwards between Mail and Address Book cutting and pasting.
This is particularly useful for people with non-US friends. The data detector doesn’t always do a good job of picking up address and phone numbers formatted for other countries.
Test how smart the data detector is for yourself. It highlights the fields it has added in green. Compare this with the information now in the notes field to see what kind of job it makes of the challenge.
Similar Posts:
- Export Address Book 1.2: Word 2004, FileMaker support
- Tag Address Book using the Notes field
- Service to add a contact to Address Book
- Five favourite time-saving Leopard Tips
- Export Address Book 1.3: vCards, Groups support
Tags: Address Book, Apple Mail, fields, iCal, mail.app, Productivity
November 1st, 2007 at 12:28 am
Unfortunately, this latter tip doesn’t seem to be quite as smart as it should be…
Firstly, just to be clear, it doesn’t create a new contact based on the highlighted information — the new contact record will always be based on the original sender of the e-mail (not a problem unless you’re working with a quoted section in a reply or forward, to be fair, but still something that’s important to note).
The second problem is that I’ve found it adding secondary e-mail addresses from quoted replies further down. For example, if I have a message from “Jane Doe” that quotes a message from “John Smith” and I attempt to update Jane’s address record with a phone number from her signature block, I also end up with John Smith’s e-mail address attached to the record as an alternate address for Jane Doe (since it appears in the attribution line right below the signature block).
The ability to add notes from message text is extremely useful, but unfortunately it only works if you have an existing field to click on. The data detector won’t pick up any highlighted text, so the person’s phone number or address needs to be in the message somewhere to allow the necessary pop-up to be initiated. Further, merely clicking on the name simply offers the ability to show the address book record, but not to actually add to it.
Obviously the presence of data detectors at all is a very cool feature, but right now it seems half-baked at best, and I’m hoping these issues get addressed, since the present inconsistency of it will probably make it something more often avoided than used.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:16 am
The question “(and why not the URL field while you are there?)” as it relates to dropdown menus everywhere is one that has bewildered me for ages. Given how sophisticated all the bells and whistles have become over the years, one would think this would be simple. Imagine the time saved?
November 1st, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Now if we could just re-add Bluetooth SMS/dialing in to Address Book, I’d be a happy camper again.
November 6th, 2007 at 3:35 am
I am having a more basic problem in Leopard Address Book. My Edit button is dimmed and I cant do anything in my contacts. Any help would be appreciated.
November 21st, 2007 at 1:27 am
I am having the same problem as Nelson Dodson. Edit button dimmed. Can’t do anything. Make changes, add contacts, nada. This happened totally randomly. Any suggestions? Sort of frightening.
November 21st, 2007 at 2:24 am
I am really getting frustrated with Address Book. I noticed that Kim is having the same problem. Can’t make changes, add contacts etc. The Edit button is dimmed. There must be others out there having this problem. The two tips foe Address Book were totally unrelated. Has anyone found an answer? Please help!
November 25th, 2007 at 3:32 am
Under Edit in Address Book, is Edit Card available?
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:17 am
I am having the same problem with Address Book.
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:57 am
Caroline — at least one of the other posters found that a reinstall solved the problem.
December 4th, 2007 at 3:18 am
Thanks Tim,
After attempting various solutions I reinstalled the operating system and it restored the edit buttons and fields and fixed some other perplexing bugs.
Thanks for your assistance.
December 12th, 2007 at 12:56 am
to tim, nelson, caroline…
did you check if the permissions in User/yourname/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/AddressBook.data are set to read&write?
wrong permissions for this file may happen by drag&drop system migration from tiger.
daniel
September 5th, 2009 at 5:19 am
You can share your Address Book with other Mac users using Address Book Server. This feature is not included with OS X Server 10.6. For those using OS X 10.4/5 as well as OS X 10.6 and don’t use OS X Server, there is http://www.addressbookserver.com which offers the ability to sync contacts. It also offers the ability to sync calendars and allow multiple users to update the same calendar.