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System Requirements

PII or above, 128M
Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista
Latest Windows patches
Email clients such as Outlook Express, Netscape Mail, Mozilla, or MS-Outlook [Optional]
Web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, or Firefox [Optional]
Windows Phone Dialer, Skype [Optional]
MS Excel [Optional]

To share the database in Local Area Network, a standalone Firebird database server should be installed on a host machine where the database file is saved.

Installation

Run "setup.exe" in the zip file and follow the prompts.

Generally, you need to be a power user or administrator to install the program files, or you may run the setup program as administrator on a normal user log on.

Open Contacts works on a working directory which contains your data files and templates. After installing the program, you may see that the installer created a shortcut called "New Open Contacts Book" on the desktop.

Open Contacts supports multiple address books per user and single address book shared by all users. The initialization works of various scenarios are described below.

Remark:

If you run "setup.exe" for updating existing program, please note that the setup program has no knowledge of working directories that you created after last installation. If the updated version introduces updated templates, you may need to manually update the Templates directory of your working directories with the Templates directory under ProgramDirectory\Dataset\Templates.

Create new address book

Double click on the "New Open Contacts Book" shortcut, and a "Locate Working Directory" dialog is shown.
Option "Create new working directory and create shortcuts" is selected by default. After you press "Proceed", the Folder Browser Dialog appears. You may create a new folder or use an existing empty one. Open Contacts will then fill in the working directory with a set of files including databases and templates, and create selected shortcuts.

You may then run new shortcuts associated with the working directory and start using Open Contacts to manage contact information.

Create new address book shared by all users

Log on as administrator or power user, then run the "New Open Contacts Book" shortcut, and a "Locate Working Directory" dialog is shown.
Check option "Proceed for all users".
After pressing "Proceed", the Folder Browser Dialog appears with the Shared Documents folder selected. You may create a new folder or use an existing empty one. Open Contacts will then fill in the working directory with a set of files including databases and templates, and create selected shortcuts. Of course you need to make sure that all users have proper privilege to access the working directory.

Remark:

For Windows 2000/XP, it is recommended that you log on as administrator to create working directories for all users. Though you may use "Run as" to gain administrator privilege for program Open Contacts, you won't be able to effectively create a new folder and select it. This is because of a bug in MS Windows 2000 and XP. When you log on as normal user and run a program as administrator, in the Folder Browser Dialog or the Save File Dialog, the "Make new folder" function does not work properly. Though the function actually create a new folder, however, this bug of Windows 2000/XP prevent the folder from appearing thus you can not select it.

For Windows Vista, you need to run Open Contacts as administrator in order to create shortcuts for all users. That is, right click on the shortcut of "New Open Contacts Book", and select "Run as Administrator" from the popup menu. Alternatively you may just manually create shortcuts with the start-in directory pointing to the working directory.

Create new address book shared by some users

Log on as administrator or power user, optionally create a directory accessible only by these users and then run the "New Open Contacts Book" shortcut, and a "Locate Working Directory" dialog is shown.
Check option "Proceed for all users", and uncheck all options of creating shortcut.
After pressing "Proceed", the Folder Browser Dialog appears with the Shared Documents folder selected. You may then locate a directory accessible only by these users. Open Contacts will then fill in the working directory with a set of files including databases and templates.
A selected user log on, and run the "New Open Contacts Book" shortcut.
Check option "Locate working directory and create shortcuts".
After pressing "Proceed" and selecting the working directory, shortcuts will be created for this user.

The other users may follow step 4 to 6, or simply copy the shortcuts over.

Installation for Multiple Users in Local Area Network

Please refer to the network data sharing guide.

Un-installation

Go to [Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs], select Open Contacts respectively, and click the Remove button. The program will then be removed.

Please note, the shortcuts created for working directories won't be uninstalled as they are not created by the installer. In addition, working directories of address books won't be removed. You may need to manually delete them.

Portable Installation

If you prefer using Open Contacts on a portable storage like USB memory flash disk, you may use a special made package called ocportable.zip and extract the files to a directory in the portable storage.

While Open Contacts was designed to be portable since day one, the package is optimized for PortableApps, which generally requires a proxy program. To install for PortableApp Menu, simply extract the files into a new directory for example OpenContacts under PortableAppsRoot\PortableApps and refresh app icons of ProtableApp Menu.

Even if you don't use PortableApps Menu, you may simply double click on OpenContacts.exe (proxy program) in the root which will eventually calls App\Program\OpenContacts.exe (actual Open Contacts main program).

The proxy program simply asks Open Contacts to use PortableAppsRoot\PortableApps\OpenContacts\Data as working directory.

Twisting Portable Installation

As Open Contacts was designed to be portable, it is not compulsory to use a proxy program. You may, however, use an existing installation on your PC to make a portable installation:

Copy YourPC\Program Files\OpenContacts with all program files to a directory for example "OpenContacts" in the portable storage.
Go to the working directory, select all contents, and copy/paste them to the "OpenContacts" directory. Open Contacts will eventually use the program directory in the portable storage as working directory.

In Main.INI, please make sure the value of field Database contains no absolute file path and value of DisableCOM is 1.

[General]
...
Database=mydata.GDB
DemoDatabase=demo.gdb
DisableCOM=1

By default, Open Contacts will provide COM interfaces for other applications such as Google Desktop Open Contacts Plug-in to call. However, you might not want your program interacting with other programs of the host computer, so it is better to tell Open Contacts not to publish COM interfaces in advance. To do so, make sure in the INI file "DisableCOM=1". Without providing COM service, the memory footprint of the program will use around 300KB less.

With option DisableCOM on, Open Contacts will not write permanent data to Windows Registry.

If you will have chances of running the program on Windows 2000 machines which might not be fully patched, you might need to copy "msvcp71.dll" and "msvcr71.dll" to the program folder of the external drive. These two files are Microsoft redistributed files, installed by Windows XP or Windows patches. And Open Contacts redistributes these two files as well during normal installation.

To find out more about portable applications, please visit www.portableapps.com. In particular, Open Contact can interact well with Portable Thunderbird.

Specification

Database engine: Firebird Embedded, or Firebird
Maximum database size: 2 or 4 GB
Numbers of data fields: unlimited
Length of field value: 128 bytes
Length of field name: 36 bytes
Numbers of sections: unlimited
Length of section name: 36 bytes
Levels of categories: unlimited
Length of category name: 64 bytes
Numbers of links between a contacts and others: unlimited
Length of relationship name: 64 bytes