Creating and using Apple Address Books with Apple Mail

Apple Mail provides an Address Book to store contact information for people you correspond with. Mail, iChat, and other applications use the information from your Address Book. For example, when you are addressing a new message in Mail, you can just type a name, and the matching address is found in Address Book.

Learn how to:

• Add someone to your address book
• Add an email's "From" name to your address book
• Addressing an email
• Search the Boston College Directory to find names and email addresses of faculty, students, and staff
• Access Apple Mail online help for more information

Adding someone to your address book

To add someone to your address book using OS X (Jaguar v. 10.2):

1. From the Window menu in Apple Mail, select Address Book.
   The Address Book opens.
2. From the File menu, select New.
   A new card is created and you can begin editing the person's information (see Figure 1):
   
   Figure 1.
   
3. Enter as much detail as you want. Press Tab to move from field to field. If you need to enter a two-line street address, press Return to add additional address lines. (You can only add additional lines to the address field.) To add more fields, such as additional phone numbers, click the plus button next to a field name. The plus button only appears after you have used fields that are already on screen.
4. When you are done entering information, click the Edit button to view the finished card.

Adding an email's "From" name to your address book

To add an email's "From" name to your address book:

1. With the email message open, from the Message menu, select Add Sender To Address Book (see Figure 2).
   
   Figure 2.
   The sender's email address is automatically added to the Address Book.
2. To add more information about the sender, open the Address Book and edit that person's entry.

Addressing an email

When you begin addressing an email, Apple Mail looks up the name and address as you type. Entries that match what you are typing are displayed for you to choose from. Names in your Address Book are used first, followed by names from the Boston College directory, if you configured Apple Mail to search the Boston College Directory  (BC sign-in required).

To quickly address an email:

1. When writing an email, in the To or CC box, enter the first few letters of a name or email address.
   Apple Mail displays the first match as you type.
2. When you see the address you want, press Return to accept it. If you are sending mail to multiple recipients, type a comma and begin typing the next name.
   When Apple Mail displays a list of names to choose from, you can also use the arrow keys to move to the one you want, then press Return or type a comma to select it.
   

To address an email using your Address Book:

1. When writing an email, at the top of the mail dialog box, click the Address button (see Figure 3).
   
   Figure 3.
   The Address Book opens.
2. Under Name, click a name, then click To (see Figure 4)
   
   Figure 4.
   Apple Mail adds the name to the To box in the New Message compose window.
3. Select as many names as you need. (Click CC to enter names as "copied to" in the email rather than as primary recipients.)
   Apple Mail adds each name you select to the recipients for this email.
4. When done adding recipients, close the Address Book window.

Searching the BC directory to find names and email addresses of faculty, students, and staff

Note: When you begin addressing an email, Apple Mail looks up the name and address as you type. Entries that match what you are typing are displayed for you to choose from. Names in your Address Book are used first, followed by names from the Boston College directory, if you configure Apple Mail to search the BC Directory  (BC sign-in required).

To search the BC directory to find names and email addresses of faculty, students, and staff using OS X (Jaguar v. 10.2):

1. Configure Apple Mail to search the BC Directory  (BC sign-in required).
2. From the Window menu in Apple Mail, select Address Book.
   The Address Book opens.
3. Do the following (see Figure 5):
   • From the Group column, select Directories.
   • From the Directories column, select Boston College.
   • In the Search box, enter the last name or email address of the BC person you are trying to find.
     Note: You can enter only part of the name or email address, or you can type the exact text that you want to find.
   
   Figure 5.

Accessing Apple Mail online help for more information

Apple Mail provides extensive online help. For additional information about Apple Mail, on the Help menu, select Mail Help.