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Often overlooked, Address Book is a hugely important element of OS X and while it might not be the first thing you open in your dock, it’s the hub for all your contacts and makes sure that apps like Mail run a lot more smoothly. It seems only fair then, that Address Book was given the OS X Lion treatment, too. It now sports a leather-bound book effect and a cleaner, simpler interface. There’s a couple of new features too, such as a sharing button and social media integration, and the interface itself does require a little more thought to get around. So fire up Address Book and let us take you through some of its newest features. We’ll help you master the interface and make address keeping slicker than ever.
1: A whole new look
The first thing you’ll notice about the all-new Address Book is that its view is very similar that of its counterpart in iOS. It’s a lot cleaner and simpler to use.
2: Find a friend
Searching is as simple as typing a name or contact straight into the search box. Results are displayed in real-time and Address Book will highlight matches.
3: Add an entry
Click on the plus icon underneath your contacts to add a new one. You can change what the default template includes in Address Book’s preferences.
4: Business and pleasure
Contact details can be categorised by type such as work or home. Click on the type next to the detail and select an appropriate one from the list to change it.
5: All a Twitter
New fields such as Twitter username can be added with this version of Address Book. Clicking on a Twitter username will take you to the Twitter app.
6: Share the details
Click on the Share button underneath a contact card to bring up Mail and email that contact to somebody else. Contact cards will attach in vCard format.
7: Get a group
Clicking on the red bookmark at the top will bring up the contact groups view. It’s a lot cleaner than the columned view of the old address book.
8: Smarter grouping
Smart Groups allow you to automatically group contacts by certain contact details. Create a new Smart Group by clicking ‘New Smart Group…’ from the File menu.
9: A single pane
Lion’s Address Book still supports the single pane contact view; simply click on the single pane button in the bottom-left of Address Book to activate it.
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This tutorial is the tenth in our Learn Lion Week series; for more articles just like this, visit the Learn Lion Week tag. At the end of the week, we’ll be giving away a prize to one lucky person who gets in touch with a question or problem related to OS X Lion. To get involved, simply tweet your question, plus the hashtag #LearnLionWeek, to @iCreateMagazine or post on our Facebook wall.
