The Contacts Folder
A contact is someone important to your business or personal life that you want to keep in contact with using Outlook. The “Contacts” folder in Outlook is basically the same as an electronic Rolodex, or address book. You use it to keep information about your business and personal contacts. It helps store and organize information about people that are important to you. Once you have entered the information details of a contact, such as their address, company, phone number, and e-mail address, Outlook will then be able to assist you in sending these people e-mail, making phone calls, and generating letters to the contact.
In Outlook, you can view the contents of the contacts folder by clicking the “Contacts” button in the Navigation Pane. By default, Outlook displays any contacts that you have created using the “Business Cards” view. You can change this view, if you wish. In “Business Cards” view, a business card represents each contact in the folder. The business card shows the contact’s name, address, telephone numbers, and e-mail address, by default. You can click on any contact’s business card to select the contact. As you add more contacts, you may find that they don’t all fit on the screen. You can use the alphabet button strip at the right side of the contacts folder to jump to a certain section of the alphabet in your contacts folder, much like you would in a Rolodex. Of course, you can always just scroll through the contents of this folder using the scroll bars, if your prefer.
Creating Contacts
To add a new contact to the Contacts folder, you must first open the Contacts folder. Then click the “New Contact” button in the “New” group on the “Home” tab in the Ribbon in Outlook 2010 or within the Standard toolbar in Outlook 2007. In either version, you could also simply double-click in the blank space inside the Contacts folder pane.
This will bring up the “Contact” window, where you can enter the contact’s details. In the “Contact” window, you enter all of the information that you wish to keep about the contact into the available fields. You can click the “General” button in the “Show” group on the “Contact” tab in the Ribbon to display fields for the basic contact information, like a contact’s name and address. You can click the “Details” button in the “Show” group to display fields that allow you to enter detailed information, like a contact’s department and assistant’s name. You can click the “Activities” button in the “Show” group to show activities that you have performed with that contact. You can click the “Certificates” button to list certificates that you can use to send encrypted mail to this contact. You can click the “All Fields” button to select a type of field information to enter in the “Select from:” drop-down. All of the fields categorized under that field type will be displayed. You can then enter or edit the information in the fields using this tab.
Also note that you can also click the “New…” button at the bottom of the “All Fields” view to create new types of data fields to store whatever information you want about the contact. You can then store this custom field information just like you store their name and email address. Whenever you have finished entering all of the information that you want to keep for your contact in the “Contact” window, just click the “Save and Close” button in the “Actions” group on the “Contacts” tab in the Ribbon. You could also click the “Save and New” button instead, to save the entry and then create another new, blank contact. This is useful when you are creating multiple contacts in a single session.
Basic Contact Management
You can select a single contact when viewing the Contacts folder by simply giving a single click to the contact’s entry. That will select the contact in the view. You’ll notice the entry become highlighted to indicate that it is selected.
You may also want to select multiple contacts. If the contacts that you want to select are not next to each other, then simply click on the first one that you want to select, hold down the “Ctrl” key on your keyboard, and then click on any other contacts that you want to select. Finally, release the “Ctrl” key when you are finished.
If the contacts that you want to select are located next to each other, then simply click on the first contact in the group, hold down the “Shift” key on your keyboard, and then click on the last contact in the group. All contacts between the first and the last contacts that you clicked will also be selected. Finally, release the “Shift” key on your keyboard.
If you want to edit the information for a contact in the future, you can easily access this information by opening up the Contacts folder and then double-clicking on the entry of the contact whose information you would like to edit. You may also right-click on the entry and select the “Open” command from the pop-up menu that appears. Once you have finished changing the information in the “Contact” window, you will need to click the “Save and Close” button to save your changes.
When you want to delete a contact that you entered, first select the contact that you wish to remove from the Contacts folder. Then either press the “Delete” key on your keyboard, or click the “Delete” button in the Standard toolbar at the top of the window if using Outlook 2007. In Outlook 2010, click the “Delete” button in the “Delete” group on the “Home” tab in the Ribbon. The selected contact or contacts will be immediately deleted. To reverse this action, select “Edit| Undo Delete” from the Menu Bar to undo the deletion if using Outlook 2007. If using Outlook 2010, click the “Undo” button in the Quick Access Toolbar.
