Organizing Your Contacts List in Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011
- 4/15/2011
- Viewing and Sorting the Contacts List
- Assigning Categories to Contacts
- Organizing Contacts with Folders
- Searching for Contacts
- Using Smart Folders
- Key Points
Organizing Contacts with Folders
With Outlook, you can create multiple folders for storing contacts. This makes it possible to keep separate contacts lists.
Why would you want to do this? Well, perhaps you use Outlook for both personal and business communications. You might want to maintain separate contacts lists for each use. This makes it easy to separate business from pleasure while making all information easily accessible in the same application.
When you have multiple contacts list folders, you can move items from one folder to the other. When you create a new item, it is added to the folder that is selected when you create it. When you delete a folder, all of the items it contains are deleted.
In this exercise, you’ll create a new contacts list folder and move some contacts into it. You’ll then see how you can toggle the display of contacts from each list.
In the navigation pane, select Address Book (if you have only one address book) or On My Computer (if you have multiple address books).
On the Home tab, click the New button to display a menu of options.
Click Folder. An Untitled Folder item appears in the navigation pane with its name selected.
Type Personal Contacts, and then press Return. The folder is renamed.
In the navigation pane, make sure the check box beside the name of your original contacts list is selected so all categories of contacts appear in the contacts list.
In the navigation pane, make sure the check box beside Personal Contacts is cleared.
Drag the contact record for Kim Akers from the contacts list to Personal Contacts in the navigation pane.
When Personal Contacts becomes selected, release the mouse button. Kim’s record disappears from the contacts list because you have moved it to a folder that is not displayed.
In the navigation pane, select the check box for Personal Contacts. Kim’s record reappears in the contacts list because you are now displaying the folder into which her record has been moved.
In the navigation pane, clear the check box for your original contacts list. All records other than Kim’s disappear from the contacts list because Kim’s record is the only one in the displayed folder.
In the navigation pane, select all check boxes to display all contacts lists, folders, and categories.
If necessary, in the navigation pane, click the disclosure triangle beside Personal Contacts to display all categories within it. As you can see, the categories in a new folder are the same as they are for all other contacts lists and folders.
In the contacts list, drag the contact record for Lisa Andrews to Personal Contacts. When you release the mouse button, nothing seems to happen.
In the navigation pane, clear the check box beside Personal Contacts. The contact records for Kim and Lisa disappear from the contacts list, because they are both in Personal Contacts.
In the navigation pane, select the check box beside Personal Contacts. All records reappear in the contacts list.
In the contacts list, click Kim Akers to select her record.
Hold down the Command key and click Lisa Andrews. Both records are now selected.
Drag either record from the contacts list to the name of your original contacts list in the navigation pane. An icon indicates that you are dragging two records.
When your original contacts list is selected, release the mouse button to move the records back to where they were at the start of this exercise.
In the navigation pane, click Personal Contacts to select it.
On the Home tab, click the Delete button. A confirmation dialog box appears to ask if you’re sure you want to delete the selected folder.
Click Delete. The Personal Contacts folder is deleted.