Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

Contacts

Contacts is OS X’s little-black-book program—an electronic Rolodex where you can stash the names, job titles, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and Internet chat screen names of all the people in your life. It can also hold related information, like birthdays, anniversaries, and any other tidbits of personal data you’d like to keep at your fingertips (Figure 11-18).

The best part: It’s centralized. This one address list appears everywhere: in Mail, Messages, and so on. And it synchronizes with your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, other Macs, and even Windows PCs (via iCloud).

Once you make Contacts the central repository of all your personal contact information, you can call up this information in a number of convenient ways:

• You can open Contacts and then search for a contact by typing just a few letters in the search box.

• Regardless of what program you’re in, you can use a single keystroke (the key on aluminum keyboards, or on more recent ones) to summon the Contacts Dashboard widget. There you can search for any contact you want. When you’re done, hide the widget with the same quick keystroke.

• When you’re composing messages in Mail, Contacts automatically fills in email addresses for you when you type the first few letters.

  Tip

  If you choose Window→Address Panel (Option-⌘-A) ...