Add file references to anyone's Address Book entry
Feb 10, '06 06:12:00AM
Contributed by: calvinkcox
As a sales person specializing in Apple sales, I am constantly running into people that are switching over from programs like Outlook to Apple's iCal, Address Book, and Mail apps. One complaint that I have heard too many times is the inability to place a file inside of a person's Address Book entry. In the past, I didn't see any way to make this possible ... until 10.4 and Spotlight came along. Using Spotlight, you can now link a person to any specific object on your machine -- a file, a folder, an application. Here's how:
- Open Address Book and go into the Template section of its Preferences.
- Add a field like 'Related Names' to your template.
- Create a Custom Title for this field can call it File.
- Edit the vCard for then person's data to which you would like to add the file reference.
- Now simply type the name of the file that you would like to associate, and save the entry
- Click on the File field (not the data in the field, click on File itself) and Search in Spotlight is now available from the pop-up menu.
Now if you do a Spotlight search on the file, or the person's name/contact info, the file will be displayed in the results. If you are having trouble following the simplified instructions here, I have written a blog entry with images and more details.
[robg adds: In testing this, it seems that it's performing an exact filename search, and not just a generic Spotlight search. For instance, I entered "bar baz" as the file name, but the Spotlight search failed to find a folder named "foo bar baz." If I ran the same search in Spotlight itself, though, the folder was found. Changing the Address Book entry to "foo bar baz" found the file. I'm not sure how to explain the disparity in results, other than to think that Address Book is passing different arguments to Spotlight.]
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