Chapter 18
Managing Contacts
Get ready to . . .
Add Twitter or Facebook Information
View a Contact’s Location in Maps
Contacts is the iPad equivalent of the dog-eared address book that sits by your phone. The Contacts app is simple to set up and use, and it has some powerful features beyond simply storing names, addresses, and phone numbers.
For example, you can pinpoint a contact’s address in iPad’s Maps application. You can use your contacts to address e-mail and Facebook messages and tweets quickly. If you store a contact record that includes a website, you can use a link in Contacts to view that website instantly. And, of course, you can easily search for a contact by a variety of criteria, including people related to you by family ties or mutual friends.
In this chapter, you discover the various features of Contacts, including how to save yourself from having to spend time entering contact information by syncing a Google or Yahoo! contacts list to your iPad.
Add a Contact
1. Tap the Contacts app icon on the Home screen to open the application. If you haven’t entered any contacts yet, you see a blank address book, like the one shown in Figure 18-1.
Figure 18-1
2. Tap the Add button, the button with the small plus sign (+) on it. A blank Info page opens (see Figure 18-2) and the onscreen keyboard is displayed.
Figure 18-2
3. Enter any contact information you want. (Only a first name in the First field is required.)
4. To scroll down the contact page and see more fields, flick up on the page with your finger.
5. If you want to add a mailing or street address, you can tap Add New Address, which opens additional entry fields.
6. To add an information field such as Nickname or Job Title, tap Add Field. In the Add Field dialog that appears (see Figure 18-3), choose a field to add. (You may have to flick the page up with your finger to view all the fields.)
Figure 18-3
7. Tap the Done button when you finish making entries. The new contact appears in your address book. (Figure 18-4 shows an address book with several entries added.)
If your contact has a name that’s difficult for you to pronounce, consider adding the Phonetic First Name or Phonetic Last Name field, or both, to that person’s record (refer to Step 6).
Figure 18-4
Sync Contacts Using iTunes
1. You can use your iTunes account, accessed from your computer, to sync contacts between your Yahoo! or Gmail e-mail account (such as the one shown in Figure 18-5), for example, and your iPad Contacts application. This sync works in both directions: Contacts from the iPad are sent to your e-mail account, and contacts from your e-mail account are sent to the iPad. First connect your iPad to your computer using the Dock Connector to USB Cable.
Figure 18-5
2. In the iTunes application that opens on your computer, click the name of your iPad (such as Nancy’s iPad), which is now listed in the left navigation area of iTunes.
3. Click on the Info tab, shown in Figure 18-6.
4. Click to select the Sync Contacts check box, and then select your e-mail provider.
5. Enter your account information in the dialog that appears.
6. Click the Sync button and your iPad screen changes to show that syncing is in progress.
7. When the sync is complete, open Contacts on your iPad. All contacts have been brought over to it.
8. Unplug the Dock Connector to USB Cable.
You can also use iCloud to automatically sync contacts among all your Apple devices. See Chapter 3 for more about making iCloud settings to choose whether your contacts are synced through the cloud.
Figure 18-6
Assign a Photo to a Contact
1. With Contacts open, tap on a contact to whose record you want to add a photo.
2. Tap the Edit button.
3. On the Info page that appears (see Figure 18-7), tap Add Photo.
Figure 18-7
4. In the dialog that appears (refer to Figure 18-7), tap Choose Photo to choose an existing photo in the Photos app’s Camera Roll (called the Saved Photos album on a first generation iPad). You could also choose Take Photo to take that contact’s photo on the spot.
5. In the Photo Albums dialog that appears, choose a source for your photo (such as Camera Roll or Photo Library) or categories such as Last Import, Last 12 Months, or Flags.
6. In the photo album that appears, tap a photo to select it. The Choose Photo dialog, shown in Figure 18-8, appears.
7. Tap the Use button to use the photo for this contact. The photo appears on the contact’s Info page (see Figure 18-9).
8. Tap Done to save changes to the contact.
Figure 18-8
Figure 18-9
While in the Choose Photo dialog in Step 6, you can modify the photo before saving it to the contact information. You can unpinch to expand the photo and move it around the space to focus on a particular section and then tap the Use button to use the modified version.
Add Twitter or Facebook Information
1. New with iOS 5, you can add Twitter information so you can quickly tweet (send a short message) others using Twitter or post a message to your contact’s Facebook account. With Contacts open, tap a contact.
2. Tap the Edit button.
3. Scroll down and tap Add Fields.
4. In the list that appears (refer to Figure 18-3) tap on Twitter.
5. Both Twitter and Facebook fields open (see Figure 18-10). Tap in either field and enter the contact’s user name information for an account.
Figure 18-10
6. Tap Done and the information is saved. The account is now displayed when you select the contact and you can send a tweet or Facebook message by simply tapping on the user name and choosing the appropriate command (such as Tweet, as shown in Figure 18-11).
Figure 18-11
Designate Related People
1. You can quickly designate family relations in a contact record if those people are saved to Contacts. Tap a contact and then tap Edit.
2. Scroll down the record and tap Add Field.
3. Tap Related People (see Figure 18-12). A new field labeled Mother now appears.
Figure 18-12
4. Tap the word ‘mother’ and a list of other possible relations appears. Tap one to change the label if you wish.
5. Tap the blue arrow in the field and your contact list appears. Tap the person’s name and it appears in the field. A new blank field also appears (see Figure 18-13).
Figure 18-13
After you add relations to a contact record, when you select the person in the Contacts main screen, all the related people for that contact are listed there.
Set Ringtones
1. If you want to hear a unique tone when you receive a FaceTime call from a particular contact, you can set this up in Contacts. For example, if you want to be sure you know instantly if your spouse, sick friend, or boss is calling, set a unique tone for that person. Tap to add a new contact or select a contact in the list of contacts and tap Edit.
2. Tap the Ringtone field and a list of tones appears (see Figure 18-14).
Figure 18-14
3. Tap on a tone and it previews. When you hear one you like, tap Save.
4. Tap Done to save the new tone setting.
You can set a custom tone for FaceTime calls and text messages through Settings, General, Sounds.
If your Apple devices are synced via iCloud, setting a unique ringtone for an iPad contact will also set it for your iPhone. See Chapter 3 for more about iCloud.
Search for a Contact
1. With Contacts open, tap in the Search field at the top of the left page (see Figure 18-15). The onscreen keyboard opens.
Figure 18-15
2. Type the first letter of either the first or last name or company; all matching results appear, as shown in Figure 18-16. In the example, pressing N displays Nancy Boysen, Nettie Dillon, and Space Needle in the results, all of which have N as the first letter of the first or last part of the name.
3. Tap a contact in the results to display that person’s information on the page on the right (refer to Figure 18-16).
You can’t search by phone number, website, or address in Contacts at the time of this writing, though you can search by these criteria using Spotlight Search. We can only hope that Apple adds this functionality in future versions of the app!
Figure 18-16
You can also use the alphabetical listing to locate a contact. Tap and drag to scroll down the list of contacts on the All Contacts page on the left. You can also tap on any tabbed letter along the left side of the page to scroll quickly to the entries starting with that letter.
Go to a Contact’s Website
1. If you entered website information in the Home Page field, it automatically becomes a link in the contact’s record. Tap the Contacts app icon on the Home screen to open Contacts.
2. Tap on a contact’s name to display the person’s contact information on the page at the right, and then tap the link in the Home Page field (see Figure 18-17).
Figure 18-17
3. The Safari browser opens with the web page displayed (see Figure 18-18).
You cannot go directly back to Contacts after you follow a link to a website. You have to tap the Home button and then tap the Contacts app icon again to re-enter the application or use the multitasking feature by double-tapping the Home button and choosing Contacts from the icons that appear along the bottom of the screen.
Figure 18-18
Address E-Mail Using Contacts
1. If you entered an e-mail address for a contact, the address automatically becomes a link in the contact’s record. Tap the Contacts app icon on the Home screen to open Contacts.
2. Tap a contact’s name to display the person’s contact information on the page at the right, and then tap on the e-mail address link labeled Home (see Figure 18-19).
3. The New Message dialog appears, as shown in Figure 18-20. Initially the title bar of this dialog reads New Message but as you type a Subject, New Message changes to the specific title as shown in this example.
4. Use the onscreen keyboard to enter a subject and message.
5. Tap the Send button. The message goes on its way!
Figure 18-19
Figure 18-20
Share a Contact
1. After you’ve entered contact information, you can share it with others via an e-mail message. With Contacts open, tap a contact name to display its information.
2. On the information page, tap the Share Contact button (refer to Figure 18-4). In the dialog that appears tap either Email or Message. A New Message form appears.
3. In the New Message form, shown in Figure 18-21, use the onscreen keyboard to enter the recipient’s e-mail address. Note if the person is saved in Contacts, just type his or her name here.
Figure 18-21
4. Enter information in the Subject field.
5. If you like, enter a message and then tap the Send button. The message goes to your recipient with the contact information attached as a .vcf file. (This vCard format is commonly used to transmit contact information.)
When somebody receives a vCard containing contact information, he or she needs only to click the attached file to open it. At this point, depending on the the e-mail or contact management program, the recipient can perform various actions to save the content. Other iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad users can easily import .vcf records into their own Contacts apps.
View a Contact’s Location in Maps
1. If you’ve entered a person’s address in Contacts, you have a shortcut for viewing that person’s location in the Maps application. Tap the Contacts app icon on the Home screen to open it.
2. Tap the contact you want to view to display his information.
3. Tap the address. Maps opens and displays a map to the address (see Figure 18-22).
Figure 18-22
This task works with more than your friends’ addresses. You can save information for your favorite restaurant or movie theater or any other location and use Contacts to jump to the associated website in the Safari browser or to the address in Maps. For more about using Safari, see Chapter 5. For more about the Maps application, see Chapter 17.
Delete a Contact
1. When it’s time to remove a name or two from your Contacts, it’s easy to do. With Contacts open, tap the contact you want to delete.
2. On the information page on the right (refer to Figure 18-4), tap the Edit button.
3. On the Info page that displays, drag your finger upward to scroll down and then tap the Delete Contact button at the bottom (see Figure 18-23).
Figure 18-23
4. The confirming dialog shown in Figure 18-24 appears; tap the Delete button to confirm the deletion.
Figure 18-24
During this process, if you change your mind before you tap Delete, tap the Cancel button in Step 4. But be careful: After you tap Delete, there’s no going back!