OSX Quick Tip: Getting your Address Book Ready for iPhone


quicktip.jpgIf you’re like me at all, you may not have your address book maliciously filled out with all the right information. In fact, when I opened Address Book last night, I only had one name in it besides the defaults. When the iPhone launches at the end of this month, however, I you’ll want to have your address book up to date, since that is what the iPhone will be syncing with to get all of your contacts for your phone.

Now, it might take your contacts off your sim card of your existing phone as well, I’m not sure about that, but I do know that if you take the time to fill out your address book now, you’ll have a much nicer presentation on your iPhone when you get it.

It’s very easy to add new contacts, you simply hit the “+” sign under the name column and enter their information. Adding a picture to each person will be important if you want to get a snapshot of just who is calling you. The image needs to be around 255×255 and be pretty much whatever you want. I went through my iPhoto library and found pictures of family and friends to place in their, knowing full well that i’ll probably take new pictures with the iPhone itself of most of them.

More than anything else, this was kind of a fun way to start getting ready for the iPhone. It didn’t take terribly long, and now I have all this information at the tips of my fingers…or…I will, anyway…


Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo is a stalwart in the tech journalism community, has been chronicling the ever-evolving world of Apple products and innovations for over a decade. As a Senior Author at Apple Gazette, Kokou combines a deep passion for technology with an innate ability to translate complex tech jargon into relatable insights for everyday users.

9 Comments

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  1. I did this as soon as I bough OS X all those years ago and the details have stayed with me since. Its so easy to do and whenever an email from a contact shows up in Mail.app their picture appears and their iChat status if they’re online.
    Just hope the Europe release of the iPhone isnt tied to a carrier like you poor guys have in the US.

  2. I got mine ready a month ago, but uhh I don’t get the iPhone til like late summer. Yay for Canada!

  3. So, um…. anybody want to point me to a page that shows the best way to export my Palm’s address book data to Mac’s own? I’m almost sheepish to admit that I haven’t…. quite…. figured it out….

    Thanks!

  4. why can I not get my address book or contacts on to my iphone. I have tried every thing all the way down to deleting my com.apple.AddressBook.plist and many other hacks.

    I have been using apple most of my design life. I can not understand how apple would make an item that would not work with there computers.

  5. @james

    This may be a silly question, but have you turned on address book and contact syncing in iTunes?

    When you connect your iPhone you’ll have that option – if you’ve done that, and it isn’t working, then explain the situation with a little more detail – is the iPhone connecting to your Mac at all? Does more than one person in the house have an iPhone? Can you get your music and movies onto it?

  6. I have successfully sync my messy outlook address book to iphone (my outlook address book comprises of Palm V address book and all my emails in outlook). I didnt realize that it will be that easy to sync. I need to clean up in outlook and sync again! The question I have now is how to delete all my contacts in iphone. I want to start new. When syncing, it really sync and I cannot choose which is the master PC or iphone to base on… Anyone has an answer, pls. let me know…..

  7. I have successfully sync my messy outlook address book to iphone (my outlook address book comprises of Palm V address book and all my emails in outlook). I didnt realize that it will be that easy to sync. I need to clean up in outlook and sync again! The question I have now is how to delete all my contacts in iphone. I want to start new. When syncing, it really sync and I cannot choose which is the master PC or iphone to base on… Anyone has an answer, pls. let me know…..

  8. I have a question, I just got my i[hone and synced my address book with iphone and have gone back to the address book to find it empty?? what have I done? can anyone help me to put my contacts back on the mac address book. I still have them all on the iphone thankfully