The Address Book provides a convenient place to store contact information for easy retrieval by programs such as Microsoft Outlook Express. It also features access to Internet directory services, which you can use to look up people and businesses on the Internet. You'll find that the following features help you organize all your contact information into the most usable form for you.
Store important information about the people and groups who are important to you
With your Address Book, you have a place to store e-mail addresses, home and work addresses, phone and fax numbers, digital IDs, conferencing information, instant messaging addresses, and personal information such as birthdays or anniversaries. You can also store individual and business Internet addresses, and link directly to them from your Address Book. For extra information that doesn't fit in these categories, there's a generous section for notes.
Find people and businesses by using Internet directory services
Directory services are powerful search tools that enable you to look up names and addresses on the Internet. The Address Book supports Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) for using Internet directory services.
Create groups of contacts for mailing lists
You can create groups of contacts to make it easy to send e-mail to a set of people, such as business associates, relatives, or friends. Any time you want to send e-mail to everyone in the group, just use the group name instead of entering each contact individually. Creating groups is also a good way to organize a large Address Book.
Share your Address Book with other users
By creating an identity for every person who uses the Address Book, each user can organize contacts into his own folder. In addition, each user can put contacts into a Shared Contacts folder so that other identities can use them.
Import names from your other address books
Moving forward with Outlook Express doesn't mean leaving your old address book information behind. You can import your personal address books from numerous popular e-mail programs including Microsoft Exchange, Eudora Light and Eudora Pro, Netscape Communicator, Microsoft Internet Mail for Windows 3.1, and any program that exports text files with comma-separated values (CSV).
You can also use your address book files with either Microsoft Exchange or any other program that imports files in CSV format.
Send and receive business cards
Business cards are the new way to send contact information electronically. When you create a business card in the Address Book, your contact information is stored in vCard format, so it can be exchanged between different programs (such as e-mail, address books, and personal planners), and between different digital devices (such as desktop computers, laptops or portable computers, personal digital assistants, and telephony equipment).
Print all or part of your Address Book and take it with you
Now you can print your Address Book to add to your personal planner. With three page styles to choose from, you can print all contact information, only business information, or only phone numbers, for any or all contacts.