claws-mail/manual/addrbook.xml

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<section id="ch_addrbook">
<title>Address book</title>

  <section id="addrbk_basic">
    <title>Basic management</title>
    <para>
	The address book is accessible via the <quote>Tools/Address book</quote> menu. It is arranged in different sections: the <quote>Address Book</quote> and its subsections, which contain the contacts that you added locally; the vCard sections, which contain imported vCards; and, if support for them was built into Sylpheed-Claws, the LDAP and jPilot sections, containing contacts from your LDAP servers or handheld devices.
    </para><para>
	In the <quote>Address Book</quote> section, you can create multiple address books; each one is able to contain addresses and/or folders. This can help you in organising your contacts by category. In addition to this, you can create groups of addresses, which can be used from the composition window to send mails to multiple people at once.
	The menus in the address book window allow you to do all of this. For example, you can create a <emphasis>Family</emphasis> folder inside your <quote>Personal Addresses</quote> address book, using the <quote>Book/New folder</quote> menu when <quote>Personal Addresses</quote> is selected, or by right-clicking on it. In the same way, you can add contacts to an address book or folder by using the <quote>Address</quote> menu, or by right-clicking an item in the list in the right-hand part of the window.
	When adding a contact, a new window will appear, where you'll be able to specify the details of the contact in the first tab (<emphasis>Display Name, First Name, ...</emphasis>), and a list of email addresses in the second tab.
    </para><para>
	A simpler way to save your contacts to your address book is to save them when reading one of their emails, using the <quote>Tools/Add sender to address book</quote> menu, or by right-clicking on an email address in the message view.
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="addrbk_expimp">
    <title>Exporting and importing addresses</title>
    <para>
	Sylpheed-Claws can import address books easily from the majority of email programs. From the <quote>Tools</quote> menu in the address book, you will be able to import Pine or Mutt address books. As these formats are not so widespread, you can also import LDIF files. LDIF is a widely-used format, so most other email programs can export their address book to this format.
	Importing an LDIF file is done via <quote>Tools/Import LDIF file</quote> and is a three-step operation: select the file to import and an address book name, check the fields you want to import if the defaults do not please you, then use the <quote>Save</quote> button.
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="addrbk_advanced">
    <title>Advanced features</title>

    <section id="addrbk_adv_ldap">
      <title>Using LDAP servers</title>
      <para>
	      LDAP servers are used to share address books across networks. They are often available in companies. Enabling an LDAP server in Sylpheed-Claws is quite straight forward. Choose <quote>Book/New LDAP server</quote> in the <quote>Book</quote> menu, then choose a name for this LDAP server. Enter the hostname of the server (<emphasis>e.g. <quote>ldap.sylpheed.org</quote></emphasis>), its port, if necessary (<emphasis>the standard port is 389</emphasis>). You can then either fill in the <quote>Search Base</quote> yourself if you know what to use, or click on <quote>Check Server</quote> to have Sylpheed-Claws attempt to guess it automatically. If your server requires authentication, you can set it in the <quote>Extended</quote> tab.
	When you close this window by clicking <quote>Ok</quote>, the server appears in the address book's sources list on the left-hand side. When selecting the server, you will see an empty list of contacts at the right, which can be surprising at first. This is to avoid doing full searches on the server without you explicitly asking for it. You can now search for names using the <quote>Lookup</quote> form at the bottom of this list. If you want a full listing, just search for <quote>*</quote>.
      </para>
    </section>

    <section id="addrbk_adv_jpilot">
      <title>Integration with jPilot</title>
      <para>
	Sylpheed-Claws can use addresses stored on your handheld device.
      </para>
    </section>

    <section id="addrbk_adv_vcard">
      <title>vCard support</title>
      <para>
	Sylpheed-Claws can import vCards of your contacts by using <quote>Book/New vCard</quote>.
      </para>
    </section>
    
  </section>

</section>