How to trim down the Address Book entry list

Nov 19, '01 11:54:01PM

Contributed by: shacker

As you reply to messages in Mail.app, recipients' names and email addresses are automatically stored in your address book. That's fine for people you want to stay in touch with, but I'm often writing to people just once and don't want them cluttering up my contact database. Apple built in a nice mechanism for dealing with this that doesn't require going through the list one at a time to remove unwanted addresses.

The secret is in the "Categories" function of the address book, and you'll need to adopt the Categories system for this hint to be useful.

Double-click an entry in your address book. If you've never categorized them before, you'll find they're in a "Temporary" category. When you decide to keep someone, assign them to a non-temporary category.

Now all you have to do is periodically view your address book by "Temporary." If there's anyone you want to keep, assign them to a different category. Otherwise, just hit Cmd-A and hit Delete all the deadbeats at once.

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