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Mac 101: Two things I love about Address Book

by Erica Sadun Nov 19th 2009 at 12:30PM

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

It's so easy to take Address Book for granted, and yet that simple utility has two absolutely killer features: big phone numbers and simple envelope printing. These features do exactly what their descriptions suggest: display phone numbers in Very, Large, Type -- and print envelopes, complete with your personal return address.

To zoom a phone number, control-click or right-click the number you want to see and choose Large Type from the contextual pop-up. Address Book zooms that number way out, allowing you to see it while dialing, even if you're not standing right next to the computer. I find that it's a lot easier just to show the number to my husband than try to read it out to him. Your spousal success rate may vary.

To print a properly formatted envelope, just insert a standard envelope into your printer. Make sure the address side (and not the flap side) faces the toner cartridge. For me, that is flap side down. My printer, which is pretty darn standard, has an envelope feeding clamp in the single sheet feed. I pop open the single sheet access, adjust the clamp inward to match the envelop size and feed in the envelop flap side down.

In Address Book all I need to do is select a contact and print it. (File > Print). Make sure you've chosen Envelopes from the Style (it's my default), and that Print my address is selected so the return address is properly added to the envelope. If you're using an envelope that's not a standard business layout, choose the proper layout. Address Book supports most common envelope styles used in North America, Japan, and "International."

Address Book can also print out mailing labels, lists, and a pocket address book. See the Style pop-up for details. For the free contact manager that comes with the OS, it's got moxie.

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More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. It's so easy to take Address Book for granted, and yet that simple utility has two...
 

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19 Comments

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Xjimjimx

Sorry, I should restate that as,
click on the application alias in the
dock to reopen the window.

January 06 2010 at 5:28 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Xjimjimx

To reopen the window, click on the alieis in the dock

January 06 2010 at 5:05 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
hilarleo

Another AB quirk- If you close the AB app window, you can't re-open it with any listed command. you have to quit and re-start the ap to get the window to re-open.

What does the article mean by "Style pop-up" in the last sentence?
My menu for printing includes envelopes, but that's it.

November 21 2009 at 7:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Scott Volltrauer

I've used and relied on Palm Desktop for a decade. With your warm regards for Address Book I'll have to reconsider my previous disregard.

mysilentscream.com

November 20 2009 at 1:43 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tom Craft

I miss the ability to do SMS over Bluetooth. Why was that ever removed? :(

November 19 2009 at 11:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Hoyt L Kesterson II

You don't have to do any key modifiers to grt large type. Just click on the field name to get a drop down contextual menu containing "large type". If you click on the email type field name, you get a drop down containing "email" that we trigger your email program to create a new message with the address from the address book placed in the "To" field. Unfortunately there is not an option to copy the field.

November 19 2009 at 5:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
bill

Eric - agreed. There are two flaws in Address book

1. the aforementioned mr vs mrs vs. family. The same issue occurs for email where you have to have individual address book entries for every person so the email "to" doesn't say "mr and mrs jones". Even Outlook allows you to have one Address Book entry yet individually alias the name for the individual emails.

2. if an address book entry is a Company and it has an email (such as "support at company dot com), you can't find that email via Mac Mail. You have to go to Address Book, and copy/paste that email since Address Book and Mail don't seem to talk when it relates to entries that are Companies.

I'd love those issues fixed!!!!

November 19 2009 at 3:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
cycladic

Eric: What about just doing a new contact with first name "Mr and Mrs John" and last name "Doe"?

November 19 2009 at 2:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to cycladic's comment
Eric

I tried that for a bit, but wasn't really into having three cards for that "family" in my Address Book. However, I didn't use that in conjunction with Smart Groups. Maybe that's the way to go...

November 19 2009 at 3:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
chedda

Does Leopard have the bluetooth button at the top of address book ? I love this feature in tiger calls and messages from your mobile arrive on the screen.

November 19 2009 at 2:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
elasticthreads

I'm loving AB in Snow Leopard's ability to sync with Google contacts. Since I've been moving over to Google Voice, this made getting phone numbers take two seconds.

Along with that, I've written two Snow Leopard services that let me right click on a phone number (in any cocoa app, but especially AB) and either initiate a phone call, or SMS that contact.
Check them out here:
http://is.gd/4YZyY

November 19 2009 at 1:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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