Chapter 30. Viewing Contact Information
Since the iPad is so small and light, you’ll probably wind up taking it with you almost everywhere you go. When you’re travelling, you’ll often need to look up someone’s address, phone number, or email address. Storing all this information on your computer is a start, but synchronizing this information to your iPad gives you the ability to search your list of contacts wherever you happen to be. (If you’ve already stored contact information on your computer, such as in the Address Book program on a Macintosh or Microsoft Outlook in a Windows computer, you can transfer that data to your iPad as explained in Chapter 20.)
To store your valuable contact information on your iPad, you’ll use the Contacts app. Besides storing text information, the Contacts app can also include a picture of each person so you’ll remember what that person looks like. And if you want to email your friend or just find driving directions to his house or business, it’s just a click away.
In this chapter, you will learn how to store and search for contact information on your iPad.
What You’ll Be Using
To store and manage contact information on your iPad, you need to use the following:
Viewing Contact Information
The Contacts app mimics a paper address book. The left side of the screen displays your list of names, and the right side of the page shows a single person’s contact information, as shown in Figure 30-1.
Besides displaying a list of names and more detailed information about a single person, the Contacts screen also displays various controls to help you find or do something with your contact information:
Index Appears on the left side of the screen and lets you jump to any contact by last name.
Search field Lets you type part of a name to find it.
Email address Lets you tap a displayed email address to send a message.
Street address Lets you tap a displayed street address to see its location on the Maps app.
Edit button Lets you edit the currently displayed contact information.
Share button Lets you send the currently displayed contact information to someone by email.
To help you find a particular name stored in the Contacts app, you can scroll up and down your list of names. For a short list of names, this may be all you need, but if you have a long list of names, you can tap the index that appears along the left side of the screen. Just tap a letter such as D or T to find all last names that begin with D or T, respectively. You can even search your address book if you just know part of someone’s name.
To view your contact information, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Contacts. The Contacts screen appears, displaying the last name you viewed.
Scroll through your list of names on the left side of the screen. (You can flick your finger to scroll quickly or just slide your finger up or down slowly to scroll much slower.)
Tap a name. The information for your contact appears in the right side of the screen (shown in Figure 30-1).
Note
If you have organized your contacts into groups using the Address Book program on a Macintosh, you can view those groups by tapping the red Groups button (it looks like a red ribbon bookmark) that appears in the upper-left corner of the screen.
Tap in the Search field. The virtual keyboard appears.
Type part of a name. As you type, a list of matching names appears.
Tap the name of the contact information you want to view.
Adding a New Contact
When you’re travelling with your iPad, you may meet someone and want to store that person’s information into the Contacts app. (Later you can synchronize this contact information with your computer as explained in Chapter 20.) To add a new contact, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Contacts. The Contacts screen appears.
Tab the plus sign that appears in the middle of the screen (look in the bottom-right corner of the left page). The New Contact window appears along with the virtual keyboard at the bottom of the screen, as shown in Figure 30-2.
Tap each text field where you want to add information (such as the First and Last text fields). You don’t need to fill in every text field. For example, you might only want to store a person’s name and email address but not a street address or home phone number.
(Optional) Tap the add photo box to choose a picture to represent a person. The Photo Albums window appears so you can choose a picture stored in the Photos app, as shown in Figure 30-3. Tap a picture you want to use.
Tap Done in the upper-right corner of the screen when you’re finished typing information about a person.
Editing and Deleting a Contact
People often change phone numbers, switch email addresses, or move to different companies. To keep your contact list current, you can add, delete, or modify any information you want.
To edit contact information, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Contacts. The Contacts screen appears.
Scroll through your list of names on the left side of the screen, and tap a name that you want to edit. The information for your chosen name appears on the right side of the screen (see Figure 30-1).
(Optional) Tap any text field. The virtual keyboard appears to let you edit text in that text field.
(Optional) Tap the white dash inside a red circle that appears to the left of some fields. A red Delete Contact button appears, as shown in Figure 30-4.
(Optional) Tap the white plus sign inside a green circle that appears to the left of a field such as add new address or add field. Tapping the icon to the left of the add field box displays an Add Field list, as shown in Figure 30-5. Tap a field to add such as Nickname, Job Title, or Birthday.
(Optional) If you’d like to delete a contact, tap the big red Delete Contact button. A dialog appears, asking if you really want to delete your contact. Tap Delete or Cancel.
Tap Done in the upper-right corner of the screen when you’re done editing a contact.
Note
When you edit contact information on your computer or iPad, you can synchronize those changes through iTunes as described in Chapter 20.
Sending Contact Information by Email
Oftentimes you may have contact information about someone important that you’d like to share with others. The simple way to do this is through email. Just pick the contact information you want to send, and your iPad attaches this contact information to an email message as a vCard (.vcf) file that practically every contact management program can import.
To email contact information, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Contacts. The Contacts screen appears.
Find a contact that you want to send.
Tap Share at the bottom middle of the screen. An email message and the virtual keyboard appear on the screen with your contact information stored as a vCard file, as shown in Figure 30-6.
Tap the To text field, and type an email address. (If you tap the plus sign at the far right of the To text field, you can pick a name stored in your Contacts app.)
Tap the Subject text field, and type a subject for your message.
Tap the message text field where the text from your notes appears, and type new text or modify the existing text.
Tap Send.
Sending Email to a Contact
If you need to reach someone, you can find that person’s name in the Contacts app and send an email to that person, if you’ve stored that person’s email address.
To send email to someone from the Contacts app, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Contacts. The Contacts screen appears.
Find a contact that you want to send.
Tap on the person’s displayed email address. An email message and the virtual keyboard appear on the screen with the recipient’s email address already stored in the To field. Just type a message and subject and tap Send.
Getting Directions to a Contact
If you’ve stored someone’s street address (either a home or work address) you might want to know the fastest route to that location. To get directions from your current location to a stored street address, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Contacts. The Contacts screen appears.
Find a contact that you want to send.
Tap on the person’s displayed street address. The Maps screen appears and displays a red pin at the location of the street address.
Tap the Directions tab in the upper left corner of the Maps screen. A blue direction bar appears at the bottom of the Maps screen.
Tap the Car (driving), Bus (mass transit), or Man (walking) icon and tap Start to see a list of directions from your current location to your destination.
Additional Ideas for Using Contacts
The Contacts app is just a simple database, so feel free to store any kind of text information in it, whether it’s information about your stamp collection or a list of celebrities you’d like to meet.
You can use the iPad to store emergency contact information, your software serial numbers, or just the hotel room numbers of your own room and those of your co-workers during your next business trip. Now when you need to reinstall a program or find the right room, just look in the Contacts app on your iPad.