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Create nested groups in Address Book Apps
I just noticed this by accident. In Address Book, you can drag a group from the left-hand Group list into another group. I had a Friends group and a Family group, but now I have a 'F&F' group containing both. Typing F&F into Mail sends and email to everyone in both groups. You seem to be able to add sub-groups to any depth, and you must double-click the sub-group in the Name column to expand it (which will select it in the Group column, basically). Pity it doesn't use the scrolling column view from Finder.

If you have the same contact in more than one group added to a super-group, that contact only appears once when mailing.

[robg adds: The screenshot at left shows how this looks (using fictitious groups on my machine). This feature is covered in Address Book's help, but you have to know exactly where to look. I finally found it in Browse Address Book Help -> Setting up Address Book -> Creating a Group of Contacts, where it merits exactly one line!

This is one of my main irks about OS X. I really believe that the help files should also be repackaged as true user guides available in the Help menu (much like Pages and Keynote now have). Using Help to simply find all the features of these programs is irritating at best -- help isn't meant to be browsed, it's really more of a "solve my problem" device. A user guide with "previous" and "next" and a real index would be so welcomed!]
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Create nested groups in Address Book | 2 comments | Create New Account
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Not "true" nested groups
Authored by: jscotta on Feb 09, '05 12:17:16PM

They are more like aliases to other groups. When you drag one group into another, it appears that it has done what you would expect. However the original group is still where you left it. If you delete that group, then the apparent group in the receiving group also disappears.

Boy that sounds convoluted. But give it a try. Make two groups. Drag group 1 into group 2. See that group one is now apparently in group 2. But also see that the group 1 at the root level is still there. Delete the group 1 at the root level. Look in group 2. Group 1 is no longer there.

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Windows because I have to. OS X because I want to.



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Create nested groups in Address Book
Authored by: jacobolus on Feb 09, '05 12:32:58PM

This is an amazing hint. I tried to figure out a way to do the same thing, without ever thinking of dragging one set of addresses into another.

I can't wait until tiger comes out and we can add a word in the "comments" field of someone's address and have them automatically added to a group



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