Chapter 20. Transferring Contacts, Appointments, Mail, Notes, and Bookmarks
If you ever feel disorganized, you can let yourcomputer or iPad help keep you on track by storing and alerting you of upcoming appointments, by storing contact information of important people you need to reach, and by saving any notes you may jot down.
You may also want to synchronize your email messages, notes, or browser bookmarks to and from your computer and your iPad. Such information can be extremely useful to have at your fingertips, but if you step away from your computer, then all this information is essentially useless if you can’t access it.
To keep such important information with you at all times, you can transfer this data back and forth between your computer and your iPad, synchronizing your data automatically so you always have the most current data at all times on your computer and your iPad.
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to synchronize contacts, appointments, and notes between your computer and your iPad.
What You’ll Be Using
To transfer personal information such as contacts, appointments, and notes to your iPad, you need to use the following:
Synchronizing Contacts
On the iPad, contact information gets stored in the Contacts app. If you’re using a Macintosh, this information is probably already stored in your Address Book program. If you’re using a Windows computer, this contact information is likely in Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.
In addition, you can also store and synchronize contact information that you may have saved in Google Contacts or Yahoo! Address Book. Syncing means that any new contact you add to your address book of choice will automatically appear in your iPad (and vice versa).
To synchronize your contact information, follow these steps:
Connect your iPad to your computer using the USB cable.
Run iTunes on your computer.
Click the name of your iPad in the Devices category.
Click the Info tab. The Info screen appears.
Check (or uncheck) the Sync Address Book Contacts checkbox, as shown in Figure 20-1.
Click the All contacts or Selected groups radio button. (If you click the Selected groups radio button, you can check the checkboxes of different contact groups you may have created on your computer.)
(Optional) Check the Add contacts created outside of groups on this iPad checkbox. Then use the pop-up menu to define which group to store these contacts in.
(Optional) Check the Sync Yahoo! Contacts checkbox. Then click Configure.
(Optional) Check the Sync Google Contacts checkbox. Then click Configure.
Click Apply.
Synchronizing Appointments
Appointments can help keep you on schedule so you know where you have to be and when. On the iPad, all this information gets stored in the Calendar app. If you’re using a Macintosh, this information gets synchronized into your iCal program. If you’re using a Windows computer, this contact information gets synchronized into Microsoft Outlook.
To synchronize appointments, follow these steps:
Connect your iPad to your computer using the USB cable.
Run iTunes on your computer.
Click the name of your iPad in the Devices category.
Click the Info tab. The Info screen appears.
Check (or uncheck) the Sync iCal Calendars checkbox, as shown in Figure 20-2.
Click the All calendars or Selected calendars radio button. (If you click the Selected calendars radio button, you can check the checkboxes of different calendars such as Home or Work.)
(Optional) Check (or uncheck) the Do not sync events older than checkbox. Then click in the days text box and type the number of days, such as 30.
Click Apply.
Synchronizing Mail, Notes, and Bookmarks
Most people rely on email to stay in touch with friends and business associates. Since staying in touch through email can be crucial for many people, you may want to synchronize your email accounts between your computer and your iPad.
Synchronizing email affects only your account settings, not the actual messages. Synchronized settings let you access your email from either your computer or your iPad without having to retype all those cryptic mail account settings.
After you’ve synchronized email account settings on your computer and iPad, you’ll be able to read and access the same messages on either device. This lets you read a message on your iPad while you’re on the road, then return back to your computer to read and respond to that message on your computer.
On the iPad, you can synchronize email account settings from the Mail app and the Mail program (Macintosh) or Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express (Windows).
If you often get good ideas and need to jot them down, you could scribble them on the nearest scrap of paper. However, it might be better to store them in the Notes app on your iPad and then synchronize those notes to the Mail program on a Macintosh or Microsoft Outlook on Windows. Notes act like miniature word processor documents for storing text.
Finally, you may have a group of favorite bookmarks that you’d like to transfer between your iPad’s Safari browser and your computer web browser. By keeping your favorite bookmarks synchronized, you’ll be able to visit your favorite websites whenever you need them.
To synchronize email, notes, and browser bookmarks, follow these steps:
Connect your iPad to your computer using the USB cable.
Run iTunes on your computer.
Click the name of your iPad in the Devices category.
Click the Info tab. The Info screen appears.
Scroll down the Info screen.
Check (or uncheck) the Sync Mail Accounts checkbox, as shown in Figure 20-3.
(Optional) Check (or uncheck) the checkboxes of the email accounts whose settings you want to synchronize with your iPad.
(Optional) Check (or uncheck) the Sync Safari bookmarks checkbox.
(Optional) Check (or uncheck) the checkboxes in the Advanced category to define whether you want to erase information stored on your iPad and replace it with information on your computer.
Click Apply.
Additional Ideas for Synchronizing Personal Information
Synchronizing contacts and appointments can be especially useful when planning your time, so you should keep this information current in both locations. You’ll be able to stay organized whether you have your iPad or your computer in front of you.
Every day, jot down your daily to-do list as a note (in either Mail on a Macintosh or in Microsoft Outlook on Windows). Then synchronize this to-do list with your iPad so you’ll always have a constant reminder of what you should be doing each day. As you accomplish tasks, mark them off, and then you’ll be able to keep this information synchronized so you can keep track of your to-do list on your computer or iPad.
Synchronizing your browser bookmarks or email account settings is something you’ll probably do once in a while since your bookmarks and email accounts probably won’t change from day to day. If you use a different browser, such as Firefox or Opera, and want to transfer those bookmarks to your iPad, you’ll need to import those bookmarks into Safari. Then you can import them into your iPad.
Synchronizing data can turn your iPad into an extension of your computer. To keep your data even more secure, consider using MobileMe to synchronize your data. That way, you can synchronize your computer data to MobileMe to save it and then synchronize the data to your iPad. If anything should happen to both your computer and your iPad, your personal data will still be safe residing on MobileMe.