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.