About the Address Book

The Address Book provides a convenient place to store e-mail addresses, home and work addresses, and phone and fax numbers. In the Address Book, each entry � or collection of information about a person � is called a contact.

You can enter as much or as little information as you want in a contact. For example, you might want to enter only a name and an e-mail address for most business associates, whereas you might want to include details such as home address, nickname, various telephone numbers, and a birthday for people you know personally.

In addition to standard categories of contact information (names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, street addresses), you can also create one or more custom fields to store information that is important to you. Fields are used as placeholders for data that you enter in a contact. For example, you can create a field to store birthdays, as well as fields to store names of spouses and children. You can also store other notes that are specific to a contact.

The Address Book provides a place for you to store contact information electronically, but that information (other than recipient names and e-mail addresses) is never sent in your messages unless you add it yourself.

You can also use your Address Book as a data source to create a variety of merged documents in Microsoft Word.

	When you send a message to a person in your Address Book, you don't have to remember or type the person's e-mail address. Simply type the person's name, and Outlook Express checks the Address Book and supplies the person's e-mail address.

Related topics

About entering contact information

Adding a contact

Changing default contact information

Adding a custom field to the Address Book

Adding the sender of a message to the Address Book

Searching for a contact

Sorting the Address Book

Importing information from other programs

Open the Address Book

• Do one of the following:
  • Click Address Book.
  • On the Window menu, click Address Book.
  • In the Folder list, click Address Book.

Related topics

Searching for a contact

Sorting the Address Book

About entering contact information

When you create a new contact, you enter information about a person (such as name, address, and phone number) in a series of panels. As you click each panel, a pop-up window appears with places for you to enter detailed contact information. For example, in the first pop-up window, you can enter first and last names, nickname, and other name-related information.

If you want to add information that is not included in one of the panels, you can add custom fields to the Address Book. When you add a custom field, it appears in all of your contacts. Use custom date fields to store dates such as birthdays or anniversaries, and use other custom fields for any other type of information.

You can also store your own notes for a contact. In the text box at the bottom of the contact window, type your notes.

After you create a contact, it appears in the Address Book list. If you enter more than one home phone number, work phone number, or e-mail address, only the default information appears in the list. You can control what information appears in the list by changing the default information for a contact.

Related topics

Adding a contact

Changing default contact information

Adding a custom field to the Address Book

Changing contact information

Importing information from other programs

Add a contact

1. Click Address Book, and then click New.
2. Type the person's name and other contact information in the pop-up window, and then press RETURN to close the pop-up window.
3. Click the next panel you want to add information to, and then type contact information.
4. Repeat step 3 to add additional contact information.
5. Click Save.

	To move to the next field in a pop-up window, press TAB. To move to the previous field, press SHIFT+TAB.
	To quickly close the current pop-up window and open the next, press OPTION+TAB.

Related topics

About entering contact information

Changing default contact information

Adding a custom field to the Address Book

Adding a member to a group

Change default contact information

1. Click Address Book.
2. Double-click the contact that has the defaults you want to change.
3. Do one or both of the following:
   • To change a default phone number or e-mail address, click the appropriate panel, and then click beside the phone number or e-mail address you want to make the default. A check mark appears and indicates the default phone number or e-mail address.
   • To change the default address, click the address you want to make the default address, and then click Make Default.
4. Press RETURN to close the pop-up window.

Related topics

About entering contact information

Changing contact information

Add a custom field to the Address Book

1. Click Address Book.
2. Double-click a contact.
3. Click a custom panel in the third row of the Contact window.
4. Click Custom 1 (or another number), or Date 1 (or another number).
5. Type a new label for the custom field.
6. Press RETURN to close the pop-up window.
7. Click Save.

Related topics

About entering contact information

Adding a contact

Add the sender of a message to the Address Book

1. In the Message list, click a message from the sender you want to add to the Address Book.
2. On the Tools menu, click Add to Address Book.

Change contact information

1. Click Address Book.
2. Double-click the contact whose information you want to change.
3. Click the panel that contains the information you want to change, and then type your changes.
4. Press RETURN to close the pop-up window.
5. To change additional information, repeat step 3.
6. Click Save.

Related topics

About entering contact information

Changing default contact information

Delete a contact

1. Click Address Book.
2. Click the contact, and then click Delete.

	When you delete a contact, Microsoft Outlook Express deletes it from both your Address Book and any groups that include the contact.

Related topics

Changing contact information

Removing a member from a group

Search for a contact

1. Click Address Book.
2. In the Display names containing box, type the name of the contact.

   As you type, only the names that match what you have typed appear in the list.

3. To show the entire list of contacts again, delete the text in the Display names containing box.

Related topics

Sorting the Address Book

About groups

Sort the Address Book

1. Click Address Book.
2. Click the column heading you want to sort by.
3. To switch the sort order between ascending and descending, click the column heading again.

	A triangle in a column heading indicates the column used to sort the list. The direction in which the triangle is pointing indicates whether the list is sorted in ascending or descending order.

Related topics

Searching for a contact