If you have a problem that this file doesn't solve, contact me at <asagoo@gmx.net>.
Topics
- Getting Started
- Groups
- People
- Contacts
- Dialling
- Importing
- Exporting
- Drag & Drop
- Printing Details
- Printing Envelopes
- Printing Labels
- Printing Lists
- Known Problems
Getting Started
If you have been using an older version of people book and already have a people book file, you can open that file with pb3 and convert it to the new format. Use the Open button in the floating window to do so. Locate and open your existing file. You will be asked if you wish to convert it. Click "OK" and give a location to save the converted file in. After the conversion, your file will be opened in the main window.
If this is the first time you are using people book, choose "New…" from the "File" menu to create a new people book file. You will be asked where to save the new file. Give it a name and save it somewhere outside the people book 3 folder, for example your "Documents" folder. After clicking "Save", the main window will appear.
The main window is the window where all data is entered, read and edited. It is divided into three parts, namely the "People" area on the top left, the "Groups" area underneath and the "Details" area in the right part of the window.
Before beginning to enter your addresses, you might want to create some groups first.
Groups
Groups provide a way of viewing and handling subsets of people in your file that have something in common. If you select a group, only people within that group will be displayed, so it makes it easier to find a person. In pb3, each person can belong to several groups. For example, a colleague of yours could also be a personal friend, so you'd put him both into your "Friends" and your "Work" group.
When you first use pb3, you see the "Groups" area in the bottom left corner of the main window. It consists of a listbox that displays all groups in your file, buttons for adding, renaming and removing a group and little arrows for reordering them.
The listbox will always show at least one item, called "All". This is not really a group, but lets you view all people within your file, independent of what groups they belong to.
To create a group, click the button with the "+" symbol. You will be asked to enter a name for the group. After you have created the group, it will be the currently active group. This means that all people you add now will automatically belong to this group. If you want the people you add to belong to no group, select "All" in the group list before adding them.
When you add a person or select an existing person, the group list will change its appearance. In front of every group, there will be a checkbox that indicates whether the person belongs to that group or not. To put a person into a group, select the person and check the checkbox in front of that group. Similarly, you can take a person out of a group by unchecking the corresponding checkbox.
To change the name of a group, either double-click it in the group list or select it and click the button with the pencil icon.
To remove a group, select it and click the button with the trashcan icon. Note that the people within that group will not be deleted.
You can change the order of your group list by selecting a group and using the little arrows to move it up and down in the list.
Since editing your groups is something you probably won't do so often once you have set them up, the group area can be minimised to a popup menu that doesn't let you edit or put people into or out of groups, but is very space-saving and actually easier to navigate if you have many groups.
In order to minimise the group area, either click the little triangle between the scrollbars of the people list and the group list, or drag the divider bar between the people area and the group area down to the bottom.
To get the group list and the buttons back, click the triangle again or drag the divider bar upwards. Double-clicking on the divider bar also collapses/expands the group area.
People
People are displayed in the people list in the top left part of the main window. Click on a person to display their details in the details area. There are buttons for adding, duplicating and deleting people, and these commands are also available in the "People" menu with keyboard shortcuts.
If a person is selected, the details are displayed in the right part of the window. This is also where you edit them.
The field for entering the date of birth takes the date in the standard format set in your "Date & Time" control panel.
The use of "Contacts" is explained in the next section.
There are different ways to search for people:
- When the people list has the focus, you can type the first few letters of a name to jump to a matching name in the list.
- In the "Filter" field, you can enter part of a name and only people with these letters in their name will be displayed in the people list, which is handy for long listings.
- To do a more complex search in different fields, use the "Search…" command from the "People" menu. The people found will be put into a new group called "Query".
If you drag a person to another application, the dragged object will contain their details in a text string. This can be used to quickly insert a person's address into the header of a letter. Alternatively, you can click on a person and use the "Copy Details As Text" command from the "Edit" menu to copy the text to the clipboard.
Contacts
Every person has different ways he or she can be contacted. Some only have a telephone, some also have a mobile phone, an email address or a web page. Since this can be so different for every person, pb3 has so-called "contacts", which are just strings of data that can represent any of the above. You can enter any number of contacts per person, and pb3 will recognise if they are a phone number, email, WWW or FTP address and will automatically do the right thing if you wish to contact a person via one of them.
Contacts are displayed in the "Contacts" list in the "Details" area of the main window. By default, some empty contacts will be created when you add a person, like "Phone", "Email" and "Web". You can specify which contacts to create for every new person in the "Default Contacts…" dialog in the "Edit" menu.
While a contact is empty, you can double-click it to enter data.
Once it contains data, an icon will be shown in the list to indicate what type of contact it is, and double-clicking it will result in pb3 attempting to contact the person.
To add another contact, click the button with the "+" icon.
To edit an existing contact, click the button with the pencil icon.
To delete a contact from the list, click the button with the trashcan icon.
You can change the order of a person's contacts by selelecting a contact and using the little arrows to the right of the contact list to move it up and down.
To contact a person via a contact, double-click it or click the button with the corresponding icon. This will result in one of the following things:
- If the contact is an email address, your default email client is launched and an empty message to the person is created.
- If it is a WWW address, your default web browser is launched and the web page is attempted to be opened.
- If it is an FTP address, your default FTP client is launched and the address is attempted to be opened.
- If it is a phone number, pb3 will attempt to let your modem dial the number.
Dialling
pb3 has some advanced dialling features that make dialling more compatible and more comfortable. Before attempting to dial a number, you should open the "Preferences" in the "Edit" menu. There you can select the serial port your modem is connected to, the dialling method (tone or pulse) and in case your modem requires a special initialisation string, you can enter it (check in your modem's documentation).
This is enough to use the basic dialling functions. pb3 will dial any phone numbers you double-click in the format they have been entered.
If you travel with your computer, use your people book file on computers at different locations or need to dial a prefix before every number to get an outside line, pb3 has a feature called "Locations" for you.
Locations are sets of dialling preferences, each set representing an environment, for example different cities. For each location, you can specify a local area code, international access code, country code and prefix. This means that you can enter all your telephone numbers in a unified format and make them work anywhere simply by switching from one location to the other.
For example, consider a London telephone number, "+44-181-5555 555".
If you had a location that represented a town in the USA, you would have "0" as the international access code, so pb3 would dial "044-181-5555 555".
But if you went to Manchester, you'd have "44" as the country code, so pb3 would dial "0181-5555 555".
If you went to London, your location would have "44" as the country code and "0181" as the local area code, and pb3 would dial "5555 555".
Locations can be selected in the "Preferences" in the "Edit" menu. To create a new location or edit an existing one, choose the "Edit Locations…" from the "Locations" popup menu. This will display a dialog where you can edit the list of existing locations and create new ones.
The checkbox "Replace country code by '0'" has to be checked for certain countries, for example in Europe, where the number "+44-181-..." would have to be interpreted as "0181-..." instead of "181-...".
Importing
You can import data from tab-delimited text files into your people book file.
Drag the text file to be imported into the main window. Alternatively, you can choose "Import…" from the "File" menu and select the text file you wish to import.
The import dialog will be displayed, where you can assign the fields in the import file to fields in your people book file. Several fields can be assigned to the "Address" field and will be combined by separating them with carriage returns. Use this for fields like street, city, state, zip and country.
Similarly, you can assign several fields to the "Contacts". Use this for phone numbers, email and web addresses.
To browse through the import file, use the "<" and ">" buttons.
If the import file has a "header record" which just contains field names and no actual data, you should uncheck "Include First Record".
Each time you import addresses, they are put into a new group called "Import".
Exporting
To export a group into a tab-delimited text file, choose "Tab Delimited" from the "Export" submenu of the "File" menu and state a location to save the text file in.
Note:
- Carriage returns in the "Address" and "Comment" field are replaced by ASCII character 11.
- The names of the groups a person belongs to are separated by character 11.
- A person's contacts are separated by character 11.
- The designation of contacts is separated from the contact data by character 29.
To export a group into an XML file, choose "XML…" from the "Export" submenu of the "File" menu and state a location to save the file in.
A group can also be exported by dragging it directly from the group list to the Finder. By default, this will create a tab-delimited text file, but you can set the behaviour in the "Preferences" in the "Edit" menu.
Drag & Drop
The following things can be done using drag & drop:
- Dragging a person from the people list (see "People" above).
- Dragging a contact from the contact list.
- Dragging a group from the group list to export it (see "Exporting" above).
- Dropping email addresses on the people list to create new people from them.
- Dropping Netscape VCards on the main window to create new people from them.
- Dropping contacts on the contact list to add them to the current person.
- Dropping tab-delimited text files on the main window to import them.
- Dragging and dropping text in multiline text fields.
Printing
There are several ways to print people's data. You can simply print their details on a page each, print envelopes addressed to them, print sheets of labels with their addresses or print them in a list.
The commands for each of these functions are in the "Print" submenu of the "File" menu. Each has their own printing dialog to make the necessary settings and to preview the printout.
In all printing dialogs, you can set the font type and size to print in and alter the page setup. There also controls for browsing the pages to be printed, if there is more than one page.
When printing envelopes, labels or lists, regions of the paper that are outside the printable area of the printer will be filled in grey.
Printing Details
To print all the details about a person or several people on one page each, select the person/people and choose "Details…" from the "Print" submenu of the "File" menu.
Printing Envelopes
To print an envelope addressed to a person or several to several people, select the person/people and choose "Envelopes…" from the "Print" submenu of the "File" menu.
The first time you print envelopes, you will be prompted for the format of the envelope. After you have chosen a format, a dialog will appear that shows a preview. The recepient's address is shown in a frame which you can position anywhere on the envelope by dragging it. If a border of the frame is outside the printable area of the envelope, that border will be drawn red.
Printing Labels
To print sheets of labels for a group of people, select the group and choose "Labels…" from the "Print" submenu of the "File" menu.
If you haven't printed labels before, you will be asked to specify the format of the sheet. When you have done so, the label printing dialog will appear, where you get a preview of the sheet and where you make all the settings.
Specify the number of columns and the number of rows on the sheet.
You should measure the margins on your label sheet and set them accordingly either by dragging the grey borders in the preview area or by entering the values in the fields.
The blue lines in the preview area represent the offset of the text, which you might want to change in case it is printed to close to the edges. You can do so by dragging them in the preview area or by entering the values in the "Margins" fields. If you move them outside of the printable area of the page, the lines will be drawn red.
If some labels have already been used on your sheet, you can specify the label at which to start printing. They are counted row by row, each row from left to right.
Printing Lists
To print a list of all people in a group, select the group and choose "List…" from the "Print" submenu of the "File" menu.
The first time you print a list, you will be asked to specify a page format. After that, the list printing dialog is displayed. Click the "Fields" button to choose the fields you wish to be printed. The fields are displayed in columns, whose width you can change by dragging the lines in the preview area. Scroll to the right or resize the window in order to see all columns.
Known Problems
- People book might crash if too many files are open or if a file is too big. Assigning more memory to the people book application using the Finder's "Get Info" command should solve this problem.
- When smart scrolling is enabled, the scrollbar of listboxes has the wrong proportion before you click it the first time and therefore might not scroll right to the bottom.
- On System 7.x, the floating windows have no title bar. They can be moved by dragging with the command key pressed. Closing requires you to reopen the main window and use the close command.
- Corrupted people book 3.0/3.0.1 files can still not be opened.
- On some 68K machines, people book 3.0/3.0.1 files cannot be opened. Please report if you encouter this problem.
- When dialling a phone number, the dialling message box might not react on the first mouse click or key press. Please report if you encouter this problem.
- You might have to rebuild your desktop file in order for people book 3.5 files to show their icon. To do so, hold down the command and option keys while the Finder launches.
