iPhone: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition

Info Tab (Contacts, Calendars, Settings)

On this tab, you're offered the chance to copy some distinctly non-entertainment data over to your iPhone: your computer's calendar, address book, email settings, notes, and Web bookmarks. The PalmPilot-type stuff (Rolodex, date book) is extremely useful to have with you, and the settings and bookmarks save you a lot of tedious setup on the iPhone.

Note

If you're a subscriber to Apple's data-in-the-clouds MobileMe service, you won't see the controls described on the following pages. That's because MobileMe, not iTunes, handles synchronization with the iPhone. Instead, all you see is a message to the effect that, for example, "Your calendars are being pushed to your iPhone over the air from MobileMe."

Syncing Notes

It was a quiet but welcome change in iPhone 3.0: Now any Notes you create on the iPhone can synchronize with the notes in Mail (on Mac OS X, version 10.5.7 or later; they show up under the Reminder heading in the left-side list) or Outlook (in Windows).

If you're lucky, turning on this simple checkbox is all there is to it. If you're not, try the suggestions at http://bit.ly/hKPkI.

Syncing Contacts

If you've been adding to your address book for years in a program like Microsoft Outlook or Mac OS X's Address Book, then you're just a sync away from porting all that accumulated data right over to your iPhone. Once there, info like phone numbers and email addresses shows up as links, so you can reach out and tap someone.

Here's how to sync ...