Business Contact Book Help

1. Switch to the People list.

2. Click the new contact button + at the bottom-left or, two-finger tap anywhere in the People list and select New Contact from the context menu or, use the Command-N keyboard shortcut.
Note: to open the context menu, you can use Control-click or you can use a two-finger tap.

3. Fill in necessary fields.
- Depending on contact information you intend to enter, switch between Show All and Show Main.
- For easy input, empty fields are created automatically and displayed only while creating or modifying contacts. If you do not need to fill a field, just leave it blank.
- For phone numbers, email addresses, website urls, IMs and addresses, additional fields are created automatically when you start filling an existing field.
- To change a field’s label, click the label and select the necessary one.
- To remove a phone number, email address, website, IM, and address, click - next to the unwanted field.
- You can select a company from the list of existing companies. After you select the company, its departments will be loaded and you can select the necessary one from the departments pop-up list or add a new one, if necessary.
- If the desired company is not included in the companies pop-up list or your companies pop-up list is empty, you can add the company without leaving the Add Contact or Edit Contact form and the company will be added to the Companies list automatically. To add a new company, click new company + next to the companies pop-up list.

4. Click Save and Close at the bottom of the form. ▲ 

1. Switch to the Companies list.

2. Click the new contact button + at the bottom-left or, two-finger tap anywhere in the Companies list and select New Contact from the context menu or, use the Command-N keyboard shortcut.
Note: to open the context menu, you can use Control-click or you can use a two-finger tap.

3. Fill in necessary fields.
- For easy input, empty fields are created automatically and displayed only while creating or modifying contacts. If you do not need to fill a field, just leave it blank.
- For phone numbers, email addresses, website urls, IMs and addresses, additional fields are created automatically when you start filling an existing field.
Add departments information:
∙ Phone numbers, email addresses, websites, IMs and addresses are added for each department separately.
∙ To view, add or edit phone numbers, email addresses, websites, IMs and addresses for a certain department, select the department in the departments list.
∙ To add a new department, click the new department button +. Select a department from the departments pop-up list or add a new one by clicking + next to the departments pop-up list.
∙ To edit a department, select the department in the departments list and click the edit button. You can change the department's name and description. Note: if a department is added to more than one company, this change will be applied to all companies.
∙ To remove a department, select it in the list and click the delete department button -. Warning: All department information, including phone numbers, email addresses, websites, IMs and addresses, will be deleted.
∙ To change a field’s label, click the label and select the necessary one.
∙ To remove a phone number, email address, website, IM, and address, click - next to the unwanted field.
4. Click Save and Close at the bottom of the form. ▲ 

1. Switch to the People list and select a contact.

2. Click the edit button.

3. Make changes to the contact.
- Depending on contact information you intend to modify, switch between Show All and Show Main.
- To change a photo, delete the current one first and add a new one.
- For easy input, empty fields are created automatically and displayed only while creating or modifying contacts. If you do not need to fill a field, just leave it blank.
- For phone numbers, email addresses, website urls, IMs and addresses, additional fields are created automatically when you start filling an existing field.
- You can select a company from the pop-up list of existing companies. After you select the company, its departments will be loaded.
- If the desired company is not included in the companies pop-up list, you can add it without leaving the Add Contact or Edit Contact form and the company will be added to the Companies list automatically. To add a new company, click new company + next to the companies pop-up list.
- If a person does not work in the selected company any more and you need to keep the contact but remove company information, select the empty string (first srting) in the companies pop-up list.
- To remove the department information keeping the company information, select the empty string (first srting) in the departments pop-up list.
- To change a field’s label, click the label and select the necessary one.
- To remove a phone number, email address, website, IM, and address, click - next to the unwanted field.
4. Click Save and Close at the bottom of the form. ▲ 

1. Switch to the Companies list and select a contact.

2. Click the edit button.

3. Make changes to the contact.
- To change a photo, delete the current one first and add a new one.
- For easy input, empty fields are created automatically and displayed only while creating or modifying contacts. If you do not need to fill a field, just leave it blank.
- For phone numbers, email addresses, website urls, IMs and addresses, additional fields are created automatically when you start filling an existing field.
- Any changes you make to a company name are applied to all people linked with this company.

Edit departments:
∙ Phone numbers, email addresses, websites, IMs and addresses are added for each department separately.
∙ To view, add, edit or remove phone numbers, email addresses, websites, IMs and addresses for a certain department, select the department in the departments list.
∙ To add a new department, click the new department button +. Select a department from the pop-up list or add a new one by clicking + next to the departments pop-up list.
∙ To edit a department, select the department in the departments list and click edit. Change the department's name and/or description. Note: if a department is added to more than one company, this change will be applied to all companies.
∙ To remove a department from the company, select it in the list and click the delete department button -. Warning: All information for the department, including phone numbers, email addresses, websites, IMs and addresses, will be deleted and all people linked to the deleted department will be unlinked, they will have no department information.
∙ You can’t delete a department if it is the only one department in the company.
∙ To change a field’s label, click the label and select the necessary one.
∙ To remove a phone number, email address, website, IM, and address, click the delete button - next to the unwanted field.

4. Click Save and Close at the bottom of the form. ▲ 

Switch to the People list or Companies list.
Select one or more contacts and click the delete contact button -.
If you remove a company, all people linked to this company will be unlinked and they will have no company information.
To select multiple contacts, hold down the Command key and click the contacts.
To select multiple contacts that are listed together, select the first contact, then press the Shift key and click the last contact.
You can also click the first contact, hold down the trackpad or mouse button and drag over all of the contacts.
To select all contacts, click any contact and press Command-A.
When you delete contacts you no longer need, they are moved to the app's Trash. Deleted contacts will be there until you delete them from the Trash.
If you change your mind about deleted contacts before you remove them from the Trash, you can restore them.
To completely delete contacts, you should Empty the Trash. ▲ 

When you delete contacts you no longer need, they are moved to the app's Trash. Deleted contacts will be there until you delete them from the Trash or empty the Trash.

To open the Trash:
Press Command-T or choose Business Contact Book > Trash.
You can switch between People list and Companies list the same way as in the main window.

To close the Trash:
Press Command-T or Command-W or click the x close icon in the top left corner.

To delete a contact from the Trash:
Open the Trash.
Open the People list or Companies list.
Choose the contact(s).
Then click the delete button or, two-finger tap anywhere in the list and select Delete from Trash from the context menu.
Note: to open the context menu, you can use Control-click or you can use a two-finger tap.
Warning: this action cannot be undone.
Close the Trash.
If you delete a contact from the Trash, either by Delete from Trash or Empty Trash, the photo associated with the contact will be moved to the Mac Trash. All other information, will be completely deleted.

How to empty the Trash:
Open the Trash.
Open the People list or Companies list.
Then click the empty button or, two-finger tap anywhere in the list and select Empty Trash from the context menu.
The corresponding Trash, either for the People list or Companies list, will be erased.
Warning: this action cannot be undone.
If you delete a contact from the Trash, either by Delete from Trash or Empty Trash, the photo associated with the contact will be moved to the Mac Trash. All other information, will be completely deleted.

How to select contacts:
To select multiple contacts, hold down the Command key and click the contacts.
To select multiple contacts that are listed together, select the first contact, then press the Shift key and click the last contact.
You can also click the first contact, hold down the trackpad or mouse button and drag over all of the contacts.

To restore deleted contacts:
Open the Trash.
Open the People list or Companies list.
Choose the contact(s).
Then click the restore button or, two-finger tap anywhere in the list and select Restore from the context menu.
Note: to open the context menu, you can use Control-click or you can use a two-finger tap.

If the contacts you are restoring exist in the People list or Companies list, you will get the warning message and you will be able to choose from three possible actions.
BCB provides different options to resolve duplicates. You can manage duplicated contacts manually or apply the selected rule for all:
- Stop: Cancel restoring.
- Skip: Do not restore duplicated contacts to BCB.
- Duplicate: Restore as a duplicated contact to BCB.
If Apply for all is unchecked, you have a choice to select different options for duplicates.
To resolve all duplicates the same way, select Apply to All.

After restore is finished, BCB shows information about processed records. ▲ 

BCB makes it easy to import information from Mac Contacts.
Minimum version requirements for importing information from Mac Contacts is OS X 10.11.

To process import, BCB needs access to Mac Contacts.
BCB asks you to grant access to Contacts when you run import first time. To import information from Contacts, you should allow access.
If BCB can’t import Mac Contacts, make sure that BCB has access to Contacts.
To check it, open Systems and Preferences, then open Security & Privacy, click Privacy, select Contacts in the list and put the check mark for Business Contact Book.app
To apply the new settings, you should restart BCB.

When you run the app first time, it asks if you want to import information from Mac Contacts.
To run import manually: Choose Business Contact Book > Import and click Import Contacts.

- If a personal contact you import contains company information, the company will be added to the Companies list automatically and the personal contact will be linked to the company.
- If a company contact you import contains personal information, the person will be added to the People list automatically and the personal contact will be linked to the company.

Importing and managing duplicated contacts:
- If you have duplicated contacts or any contacts you import are duplicates of existing ones in Business Contact Book, you can easily resolve duplicates.
- While importing, BCB finds duplicated contacts. Depending on the contact type, Person or Company, the app detects duplicated contacts with same First Name, Middle Name, Prefix, Last Name and Suffix (for People) and with the same Company Name (for Companies).

BCB provides different options to resolve duplicates. You can manage duplicated contacts manually or apply the selected rule for all:
- Stop: Cancel import.
- Skip: Do not import duplicated contacts to BCB.
- Replace: Overwrite an existing contact with a new one.
- Merge: Combine information for a contact from both sources.
- Duplicate: Add a duplicated contact to BCB.
If Apply for all is unchecked, you have a choice to select different options for duplicates.
To resolve all duplicates the same way, select Apply to All.

After import is finished, BCB shows information about processed records. ▲ 

Transferring BCB contacts to Mac Contacts is a two-phase process: you need to save your BCB contacts to a CSV file first and then import the file to the Mac Contacts application. Please visit How to transfer BCB contacts to the Contacts app for more detailed information. ▲ 

BCB makes it easy to export the entire list of your contacts or the selected ones to a CSV file that you can later import to MS Excel, Numbers or any application that supports csv files. For detailed information on how to export BCB contacts, visit the Export contacts to CSV page. ▲ 

Select a contact and click edit or click + to add a new contact.
Click Add Photo.
To use a photo from recent photos or default pictures, click Recents or Defaults.
To use a photo from your Mac, click Other and select the desired one.
To use a photo from Photos, click Other and scroll down the left pane to Photos.
To take a photo, click Camera.
You can edit the selected photo. Drag the slider to zoom in and zoom out.
To give your photos special effects, click the "Apply an effect" button next to the slider.
To rotate a photo, hold down the Option key while you drag.
Click Done. ▲ 

Select a contact and click edit.
To change a photo, delete the current one and add a new one.
Note: the deleted photo will be moved to the Mac Trash. ▲ 

Select a contact and click edit.
Click Delete Photo.
Note: the deleted photo will be moved to the Mac Trash. To delete a photo permanently, you should remove it from Trash. ▲ 

To open the Department List Editor, press Command-D or choose Business Contact Book > Department List Editor.

To add a new department, click the new department button + and add the department's name and description.

To edit a department, select the department in the Department List Editor and click the edit button. You can change the department's name and description. Note: if a department is added to more than one company, this change will be applied to all companies.

To remove a department, select it in the list and click the delete department button -. ▲ 

BCB provides an easy way to send emails.

Sending an email to a contact:
Select a contact and in the right pane with contact's details, click on the blue envelope next to the email address. Or you can select a contact, select Send email from the context menu or use the Option-Command-S keyboard shortcut.
Then, in the Send email window, select the type of the email address you want to use and click Send.
BCB opens your default email app and creates an email message addressed to the contact you selected.

Sending an email to multiple contacts:
1. Select a group of contacts.
To select multiple contacts, hold down the Command key and click the contacts.
To select multiple contacts that are listed together, select the first contact, then press the Shift key and click the last contact.
You can also click the first contact, hold down the trackpad or mouse button and drag over all of the contacts.
To select all contacts, click any contact and press Command-A.
2. Select Send email from the context menu or use the Option-Command-S keyboard shortcut.
Note: to open the context menu, you can use Control-click or you can use a two-finger tap.
3. In the Send email window, select the type of the email address you want to use and click Send.
BCB opens your default email app, creates an email message and fills the "Bcc" (blind carbon copy) field with the corresponding email addresses of the selected contacts. If you enter the recipients' email addresses in the "Bcc" instead of the "To" or "Cc" fields, each recipient may only see its own email address. Recipients will not see the full list of recipients in the "Bcc" field.▲ 

Select a contact and, in the right pane with contact details, click on the blue arrow next to the website url. ▲ 

Start a search:
1. Select the People list or Companies list. To search the Trash, press Command-T or choose Business Contact Book > Trash and select the necessary list.
2. Enter a word or phrase in the Search field, then press Return.
By default the search is performed in "All columns" of the selected list.
To search only in a certain column instead of all columns, click in the Search field, then click the magnifying glass icon 🔍  and choose the corresponding column ("First Name", "Last Name" or "Company Name" for the People list and "Company Name" or "Web Site" for the Companies list).
Note:
- The People list and Companies list are searched separately.
- To appear in the search results, a contact must match all your criteria.

If searching the BCB doesn’t return expected results, there are several things you can try:
- Check the text you entered in the Search field. Make sure the word or phrase is spelled correctly.
- Check the search criteria you are using. For example, you could significantly narrow you search by selecting begins with instead of contains or using the match case option instead of ignore case.
- Check the location you are searching in:
∙ The People list and Companies list are searched separately.
∙ You may have excluded certain columns from searches. For example, if you select the "First Name" column, the search results include only the records where the first name matches the search criteria. To extend the search to all columns, click in the Search field, then click the magnifying glass icon 🔍  and choose "All Columns".
- You can always find information about the current search in the window's title.
- You may have deleted the records from the database. In this case, open the Trash and search the deleted records.

Clear search:
To clear search results and return to the People list or Companies list, just click the Remove icon ×;  in the Search field.

Repeat a recent search:
Click the Search field, click the magnifying glass 🔍  and choose a recent search from the Recent Searches list. BCB stores the list of 25 recent searches.

Clear the list of recent searches:
Click the Search field, click the magnifying glass 🔍  and choose Clear Recent Searches.

Search criteria:
BCB "Search" supports the following search criteria: contains, begins with, ends with, like or matches and ignore case or match case. For example, you can search records which begin with the word "Group" or just contain "Group".
To change criteria, choose the necessary ones from the popup menus below the Search field.
The like option allows you to create your own search pattern using wildcard characters. You can enter a pattern in the Search field, or choose a recently used pattern from Recent Searches.
To search using a specified pattern, select like from the first popup menu below the Search field and enter the pattern in the Search field.
If you search using like, the asterisk (*) and question mark (?) characters are used as wildcard characters and have special meanings.
In wildcard patterns, ? matches any character and * matches any number of characters (0 or more characters).
For example, if you search "Company Name", and enter "*ltd" in the Search field, it matches any company with the name that ends with "ltd".
As the question mark matches any single character, "l?af”" matches "leaf", "loaf”, etc.
When the match case option is selected, BCB distinguishes uppercase from lowercase letters.
If you want BCB to consider uppercase and lowercase letters the same, select ignore case. ▲ 

For detailed information on how to search your contacts using any combination of fields, visit the Advanced Search page. ▲ 

BCB comes with powerful sorting features. Just click the column's header to get your contacts sorted. Click twice to change the order. The column's header you click will have the main sort priority. All other columns will be used for deeper sorting with lower priorities. E.g. if you click the First Name header, all contacts will be sorted by First Name and contacts with the same First Name will additionally sorted by Last Name.
People list can be sorted by Last Name, First Name, Company and Photo.
Companies list can be sorted Company Name, Web site and Photo. ▲ 

To group contact information the way you need, you might need to swap columns to view their data side-by-side. To reorder the columns, simply select a column name, then hold down the mouse or trackpad button while you drag it to a new location. Release the button to drop the column into place.

To change the column width to automatically fit the contents (AutoFit):
Select the column or columns that you want to change.
Double-click on the right-side boundary between two column headings. ▲ 

With BCB, you can print some or all of the contacts. Business Contact Book provides a unique ability to change various printing settings so you can easily select only the specific information you want to include into your printout.

You can print either an individual contact or a list of contacts from the People list or Companies list using the Card or Table style.

With the new version of BCB, you can create and customize a print report until it shows exactly the information you want to print. You can add any fields you need, organize them in the necessary order ^*, specify paper size, orientation, margins and font size. You can either print your report or save it as PDF via the print option.

How to print contacts:

1. Open the People list or Companies list.

2. Filter your contacts or just select one or more contacts that you want to appear in your report.
To select multiple contacts, hold down the Command key and click the contacts.
To select multiple contacts that are listed together, select the first contact, then press the Shift key and click the last contact.
You can also click the first contact, hold down the trackpad or mouse button and drag over all of the contacts.
To select all contacts, click any contact and press Command-A.

3. Choose Business Contact Book > Print (from the File menu at the top of your screen) or press Command-P.

4. In the BCB Print window, select the print style.
- If you print information for one contact, you can choose either the Card style (by default) or the Table style.
- For multiple contacts, the report is printed in the Table Style (list view).

5. Prepare a card or a table for printing:
- Select what fields you are going to print.
- For the Table style reports you can drag and drop fields to change their order in a report.
- Specify font size and margins.
- If you have a report with many rows and columns, it can be difficult to read, so you can choose the Grid lines style and enable or disable the Shade alternate rows option ^*. You can combine the gridlines and shading options or use them separately.
^* For table style only.

6. After you prepared a card or a table report for printing, click the Print button.

7. Choose a printer, number of copies, paper size, orientation, etc.
If no printers appear in the menu, open the Printer menu, choose Add Printer and choose an available printer.

8. When you are ready to print, click Print or Save as PDF. ▲ 

For detailed information on how to print mailing and return address labels in BCB, visit the Print Mailing labels page or check the list of FAQ. ▲ 

For more information on how to print envelopes in BCB, visit the Print envelopes page or check the list of FAQ. ▲ 

You can accomplish many BCB tasks using keyboard shortcuts.
Command-, (Command-Comma) - open BCB preferences
Command-A - select all contacts
Command-N - create a new contact
Command-E - edit the current contact
Command-Backspace - delete contact(s)
Option-Command-S - send email to one or multiple contacts
Command-S - save changes and close Add contact or Edit Contact form
Command-P - print People list or Companies list
Command-T - open the Trash
Option-Command-E - export contacts
Fn–Up Arrow - Page Up: Scroll up one page
Fn–Down Arrow - Page Down: Scroll down one page
Option–Up Arrow - Home: Scroll to the beginning of a list
Option–Down Arrow - End: Scroll to the end of a list
The Option key (⌥) is located between the Control key and Command key on a typical Mac keyboard. Read more about Option key on Wikipedia.

Quick search:
Select the People list, Companies list or open the Trash and just start typing. ▲ 

The Backup option controls making backup copies of entire BCB database, including photos.
Turn this option on to have BCB automatically make a backup copy of the BCB database when you shut down or restart your Mac, quit the app and before import.
BCB creates a backup folder in your User folder
The format of the dated folder name is static and non-localized: YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS.
Each backup folder contains a full copy of BCB contacts database. ▲