• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Click the bookmark to flip to the contacts in that group.

Click the + button below the list of contacts in that group.

Type the person or company’s name and other information.

Click Done to complete the contact.

Creating Groups of Contacts

You can use Address Book’s groups many ways. For example, you can create a group of people working on a current project so you can email them all at once. Or you can create a group of addresses for holiday cards so you can print address labels. Each contact can be in as many groups as you want to put it in; deleting it from a group doesn’t delete it from Address Book.

Click the + button under the list of groups and choose New Group from the pop-up menu.

Give the new group a name.

Click All Contacts or a group that contains the contacts you want to add to the new group.

Drag the contacts into the new group.

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Tip: A Two-Way Street

Creating a new group can work backward, too. First, to select the contacts you want to put in the group; then choose File, New Group from Selection.

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Tip: Edit This

The Edit button is also where you should head (or, more precisely, click) when you want to make changes to an existing Address Book entry. To apply your changes, click Done, or you can just click another contact or group instead.

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Creating a Smart Contact Group

You create smart groups in the Address Book, but your Mac maintains them. After you determine the criteria for a contact’s inclusion in a smart group, the Mac makes sure that the right contacts are sorted into that group at all times, even after you’ve changed contact information or added new contacts.

Choose File, New Smart Group.

Type a name for the group.

Choose criteria for the group’s members.

Click + to add criteria.

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Note: Going Negative

Don’t forget that you can set most smart group criteria to negative values—meaning you can choose to include everyone in your Address Book who doesn’t match a particular criterion.

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Click OK to create the group.

Click the group’s name to see its members in the Name column.

Control-click the group’s name to email its members or export their contact data.

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Note: Setting Conditions

You’re not limited to just one criterion when creating a smart group. You can set as many conditions for inclusion as you like, and you can choose whether group members must satisfy all the conditions, or just some of them.

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Note: What’s It Good For?

Use smart groups to track contacts’ birthdays, anniversaries, or other important dates; collect all contacts from a particular company into a single group; or look up which friends and family members live near your next vacation spot.

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Exporting Contacts as vCards

Apple has chosen the vCard as its standard method of exchanging contact information among Address Book users as well as between Address Book and other programs. vCards are very small files that you can attach to email messages. Most contact management programs can read them, so they’re a good way to send contact information to just about anyone, including Windows users.

Click a name in the contacts column to select a single person, or to select more than one person.

To create a vCard for an entire group, click the group’s name in the first column.

Drag the group, contact, or contacts onto the desktop to create the vCard file.

The vCard appears on the desktop and can now be attached and sent via email.

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Note: The Express Route

You can find contacts quickly in Address Book by clicking the All group and typing a name, city, or other information into the Search entry field at the top of the Address Book window.

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Importing a vCard into Address Book

Getting vCards into the Address Book is just as easy as getting them out of the Address Book. When you receive a vCard attached to an email as a sort of electronic business card,