Multiple Address Books?

I receive hundreds of business cards and I would like to retain the information digitally, but would not like to input them all in my Address Book as I don't want to have thousands of entries. This could get especially tiresome while scrolling through my iPhone contacts database, you know? Do people keep multiple Address Books, like for either work or personal? I can't imagine CEO's like Steve Jobs keeps the info of tens of thousands of people they meet all in one Address Book.

I bought a Penpower Card Scanner which has it's own database for business cards which I haven't played with yet. I was planning to keep a database there and the cards that turn out to be useful I would export into Address Book. Let me know if anyone has any insights into this matter. A Google search surprisingly bred few results.

Thanks,
Alexander

Keep categories in your address book, and place the cards in appropriate ones.
Bento may be good application for you to use also

I too am most wanting this feature! Like holding the option key in iPhoto lets one create a new library, so too should address book have this feature. Surprised there's not a 3rd party app like iphoto library manager for address book either. Using groups does nothing to keep the file from being bloated. Or from keeping work and home contacts separate. Keep digging, keep asking...

I am using the concept of ' groups ' in my address book .... nice and tidy.

Cheers ... McBie

McBie said:

I am using the concept of ' groups ' in my address book .... nice and tidy.

Cheers ... McBie

Click to expand...

Same here. You can make as many different Groups as you want in Address Book.

Groups do work for some people, but I like to scroll through my contacts sometimes and if I added every single person that I ever met then my Address Book would balloon to thousands of people. My solution so far has been to create a 2nd user login and then keep "other" contacts in that username's address book. Kind of a hassle but at least it keeps my address book clean. I've also been using Penpower's software which has its own database that doesn't import into Address Book until I manually do it.

Multiple Address books

I want to print address labels for one of my groups but the Mac and the Avery applications both source the entire Address Book not the group. So is there a way to take the Group and save it as an Address Book? If I used the workaround of logging in as a different user, how would I migrate the address group over?

I tell you, Apple would be helping its business users if it could come up with a worthwhile program for contact management. As it is, Daylite is very weak and ACT! doesn't make a Mac version.

I hope this helps (this was the answer I was looking for): https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2584940?threadID=2584940&tstart=0