This is a short guide to help you use all the features of ABContacts version 1.3.

ABContacts works more or less as the built-in Contact App. When started, you will see the groups list. If you have many contacts you'll see a progress bar. That bar shows the process of loading the contact information that ABContacts uses. If using the default settings the app loads the first name, last name and contact name. If you turn on the load ext. info in the settings (see below) the app will load also other fields. Depending on the number of contacts and the groups number you will see the groups that becomes black from gray. This shows the app getting group membership information. If you touch a group when it's gray it will not show its members but you can choose a black group without waiting that all groups become black. ABContacts loads the info at startup to be more fast later. In fact, if you have groups with many contacts, ABContacts is a lot faster than the built-in Contacts app when looking at that groups.

When looking at the groups list you can touch two buttons. The Edit button at top left corner can be used to modify the group name or to remove a group. If you tap it the list will show the red minus button and the blue disclosure button on every row but "All contacts". Touching the red minus button a delete button appears. Touching delete you will delete that group. The contained contacts will not be deleted. To add a group touch the Plus button. To edit a group name, touch the blue disclosure button.

Touching the blue disclosure button or the plus button you'll open the group name screen. You can insert or change the name and touch Done to save changes. Touch Cancel instead to cancel any editing you may have done.

To show the quick actions for the group just double tap its name. You'll see four options. Touch an option to open the Mail app with the recipients filled with the email addresses of the contacts in the selected group. The first option will use all email addresses. The second will use only work addresses. The third will use only home addresses. The last will use only the addresses labeled with "abcontacts" (case insensitive). You can use this last option if your contacts have many email addresses and you want to choose which one to use when sending to groups. iPhone can't read the "distribution list" flag that's available in the Mac address book yet. Touch outside the transparent black window to close the Quick Actions.

To see the contacts that belongs to a group just touch its name. The contacts screen will appear. Here you'll find all the contacts that belongs to the selected group. You will see the first and last name on a row and the company on another row. You can change the order (i.e. first name first or last name first) in the Contacts app settings. You can also change the sorting preference. You can search for contacts with the search bar. The search is done on first name, last name and company. This screen works the same way that the one in Contacts.

To remove a contact or edit its groups membership touch the Edit button. You'll see the red minus button on the left and a group icon on the right of every row. The red minus button works as above. If you are in any group but "All contacts" touching delete will only remove the contact from the group. If you are in "All contacts" touching delete will remove the contact from your address book. The app will ask for a confirmation when you're in "All contacts".

Touching the groups icon on the right will show a screen with the group names and some checkmarks on the right. If the checkmark appears on a group than the contact is a member of that group. You can edit the checkmarks as you like and touch Done to save your changes. Touch Cancel to cancel any editing you may have done. You can assign a contact to as many groups you want.

To add a contact you have to touch the Plus button. The app will show some buttons. If you are inside the "All Contacts" you'll see the "Add new contact" and "Fast new contact" buttons. If you are in another group you'll see a third button "Add contacts".

Choose the "add (existing) contacts" button to add existing contacts to the current group; the app opens a screen where you'll find all the contacts that are not already assigned to the selected group. You can search them with the search bar. To add a contact just check it off. You can check off as many contacts as you want. If you use the search function some checked contacts can disappear but they will be added when touching Done. You can also clear the search to see all the contacts with their checkmarks. Touch Done to add the contacts to the group or Cancel to cancel the operation.

Choose the "add new contact" button to add a new contact to the current group; The app will show the same screen you'll find in the built-in contacts app.

Choose the "fast new contact" button to add a new contact to the current group; The app will show a fast screen wth the most used contact fields and the group list. Fill the information you need and check off the groups you want this contact be a member and touch "Done". The contact will be created and assigned to the selected groups in one step.

When showing the contact list you can touch the contact name to show the contact details. That screen works like the one in Contacts app. If you double tap a contact name you will see the Quick Actions for that contact instead. Quick Actions shows the telephone numbers with their labels. Touching a number will call that number. The email addresses with their labels are also shown. Touching an address will open the Mail app with that address as the recipient. You'll see also the mobile numbers with the sms icon. Touching one such number will open the SMS app with that number as the recipient. The last quick action can be used to send the contact information to others via email. If you touch it, the app will show a screen where you can choose which information to send and a button to create the email. To close the Quick Actions touch outside of the black transparent window.

When looking at a contacts list you can touch the "more" button, the one with three dots. Touch it to show a list of options. You can filter your contacts, see the upcoming birthdays or events and show unfiled contacts. Unfiled contacts are contacts that are not assigned to any group. If you like to have all your contacts categorized you can use this feature to see what contacts are still not grouped.

Choose "Filter contacts" to start filtering. You will be able to filter your contacts by: company, city, state, country and notes. To activate a filter just touch the field. The company, city, state and country fields will show you a list of available values. Touch one to filter by that value. Note that if a filter is already active the company, city state or country list will be filtered by the active filter. You can filter by more than one field at a time. The note field will show the keyboard. You can type in some letters that will be searched in the notes field. To clear the filter touch the button at the bottom of the screen. The first time you use a filter the app will load all the extended information from your address book that are used by filters. This can take some seconds if you have a lot of contacts.

When a filter is active ABContacts will show you only the contacts that matches your filter. So using a filter you can "reduce" the contacts number. This can be extremely useful for business users that use mostly contacts of a specific city or state or with a specific note. To remember you that a filter is active the title bar becomes orange. Filter can survive if the app is closed and than reopened. You can disable this in the settings. For performance reasons when a filter is active the groups does not show the number of members to the right of the group name.

If you choose "Upcoming birthdays" from the more menu you'll see the upcoming birthdays of contacts of the current group. The app will show you the birthday date, the number of days from today and how many years the contact will have on his birthday. You can choose how many days you want to analyze in the settings. Events works the same way but you'll see the event name instead of the age of the contact. Business users can use the events to store business related events and have ABContacts shows which one are arriving.

You can customize some options in the settings. To show them, open the Settings app of the iPhone and choose ABContacts. You can choose to load the extended information at startup instead of when needed. If you use a lot the filters it can be helpful to have them load at startup. You also need to turn on this switch if you want to see the company department and job title in the contacts list. If you don't, that info will be shown only after you triggered the loading of extended information using a filter. You can choose to not save the filter when the app is closed. Default is to save and reapply the filter on next app start. Finally you can choose how many days you want to examine for birthdays and events.

Back