welcome back everyone my name is joel feld and today we're going to discuss
contacts how to create them create groups and all that good stuff so let's get started
depending on what device you are on the concept of creating a contact will be very very similar but
also depending on the device that you're on you may or may not be able to create what you want to
create nowadays when you add an email account to a device like your iphone or ipad or the computer
your email account provides much much more than just your email it provides other information
like contacts calendars notes reminders and each email account can have its own contact book or
its own set of notes or its own calendars and the thing before we even get started is you have to
know that your contacts aren't necessarily on the device that you create them on so for example
when i create a contact on my mac computer it doesn't mean that that contact is stored
on this computer you have access to it on this computer but it really depends on what account or
where you're actually creating it and that'll make a little bit more sense here once we kind
of dive deep into the settings so let's start off on the mac and create a simple contact
so i'm going to go to the contacts app and on the left here i have multiple accounts so when i look
at my mac here and i'm in contacts if i go up to contacts and choose preferences i can see that
under the accounts tab here i actually have an account with icloud i have an account with outlook
or microsoft exchange i have a google account i have yahoo account and i have an aol account
i have all of these different accounts that give me the ability to synchronize five different
address books so when i'm adding a contact in here it could be only going to icloud it could be
only going to microsoft it could be only going to yahoo and so if i look back under the general tab
down at the bottom we have this option that says default account and right now mine is set
to icloud because that's where i usually use 100 of all my contacts so when i create a new contact
it's automatically going onto icloud and it's not going to show up in gmail.com or aobal.com or
yahoo anything like that let's dive in we're going to leave the preferences open here because we're
going to come back to that and if i want to create a brand new contact i can do it a couple different
ways i can go to the file menu and choose new card and it gives me all of this information to enter
in based off of the person or the contact card that i'm adding into the address book now we're
gonna we're gonna create some fake people here i like the tv show the simpsons so we're gonna
kind of uh use them as a little bit of inspiration so we're gonna go with bart sampson and uh we'll
type in a telephone number one two three four five six seven eight nine zero zero something like that
add another number in there we'll give them an email address just for fun bartman at something
dot com and again i could go through all of the different information assign a ringtone if they
have a website i can assign a birthday a social media account and i have no idea
what some of these are god do god do anyways you kind of get the point um here i'm able to enter
all of the information that is associated with this particular individual if i want to even put
a picture i can click the plus sign here and i can choose from the defaults that apple gives me i can
upload and do a camera picture right here i could go to the photos that i have linked on my photos
library or if i have just a picture anywhere i can actually just drag a photograph and bring
this right onto the contact and it's going to add that picture right there for me and i can do save
and then in the bottom right i'll go ahead and choose done and now that contact is there
and because that contact is there if i go to my ipad notice it automatically shows up here
because it's synchronizing to the cloud that contact is associated with my icloud and in return
it's on my ipad let's create another one here we'll do new contact let's do homer next homer
samson i'll give my phone number one two three four five six seven eight nine just random digits
that's definitely way too many digits delete we'll give them an email address of homer at something
dot com or actually we'll do doh like that we have a picture for homer as well we'll throw that in
there because who doesn't love donuts we're gonna go through and create a handful of other contacts
let's actually go out to icloud and create them so if i open up safari i can actually go out to
i'm at icloud.com but if we sign in again here i can go to contacts and here is
bart and here is homer because i created them again within that icloud environment
if i click the plus sign down in the bottom left i can choose new contact we'll do marge samson
and i could just choose done here and i could pick up where i left off down here on contacts
notice it's already there that's how quick it is so i can come back and minimize that we could
bring marge's hair there save we'll do edit and we can add a telephone number for her as well
and we'll do big blue at something dot com choose done and there we go so now i'm going to come to
my ipad if i want to create and add someone for my ipad there's a little plus sign in the top
center there i can touch that and this is where i could type in maggie samson and add a phone number
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten zero zero something like that we'll do add
an email just do maggie dot samson at something dot com and choose done so that's going to be
created on my ipad and in return notice it just showed up on my computer and i can always edit and
it will reflect everywhere else so we'll drag in a photograph i like having pictures for my contacts
i just you know it's fun why not just because you can that way when i'm going on my ipad here i see
nice little pictures of everyone and maggie will get her pacifier here soon and so let's create
another one we'll finish off the uh the family here we're gonna do lisa sampson we're gonna throw
in a picture save again we'll do sex um phone at something.com too many characters for the number
all right we'll choose done so now we have all of these families here now the other thing to
look at with the contacts when you're creating them on your iphone or ipad is underneath the
settings scroll down and go to contacts and you also want to make sure that your default account
is set to really whatever account that you're primarily using for your contacts there's no right
or wrong answer you can use icloud you can use gmail you can use aol you could use yahoo actually
you might not be able to use aol and we'll get that into a later video because if we go back to
mail accounts notice aol it doesn't even give me the option to synchronize contacts so
number one if you use aol that's probably time to not use aol same thing with like comcast xfinity
mailing notes don't use comcast just time to time to get a new email time to rethink our
email account long story short back under contacts this is where we see the accounts of what accounts
actually turn on and have the ability to sync with contacts we can sort our information for
first name last name how it's displayed to us in the display order same thing short name
first name and last initial last name in first initial so you have a couple preferences in here
that you can tweak and change also now you can create contacts and then you can also create
contact groups and the thing is you cannot create a contact group on an iphone or ipad don't ask me
why but it's super annoying you can't do it so the best way to create a contact group is either from
your computer on contacts the app or go out to icloud and create a group there so on the computer
here i can create a group by going up to file and do new group and it's going to create a new group
under icloud because that's my default account so i could say samsung family and then i could
also go up to icloud i could go to safari we'll pull icloud back up if i go back to that plus
sign in the bottom left i can do new group from here as well and we're gonna do uh tech giants
because i'm going to add a few more contacts in and notice it's pretty quick with the syncing
and the synchronization of everything so here's here pops up tech giants right here and we're
going to do we're going to do a company of apple and we'll throw in a put that there
choose done we're going to do another contact new contact let's do company
and the company just pretty much gets rid of the first and last name there for you you can still
put it in there but it kind of just switches the order of those fields around there's no right or
wrong answer for that and a personal preference oh let's see my logos are a little bit off that's
okay we're just going to say save there do another one here new contacts google put that in there
save done and we'll do one more for you guessed it microsoft microsoft and we'll throw a photograph
for that one as well there we go save and done so now because i was selected on this tech giants
group it actually placed these contacts in there if i go back to icloud or all icloud
all of those contacts are in this one giant big group if i go to samson family no one's in there
so i want to go back to all icloud and i can drag these individuals in that group
and when i select that now they're in there as well so if i drag the rest of them i can hold
down command on the keyboard select multiple and drag them all at once now here's a cool
thing a little side tip here for you let's say that homer if i drag him into tech giants also
when i have homer selected if i hold down option on the keyboard notice how it illuminates the
groups on the left hand side so this is telling me that homer is in the group all icloud which he's
part of that all group he's also in samson family and he's in the tech giants folder if i hold down
option while holding microsoft notice it only illuminates tech giants in all icloud he's not in
that samson family folder or group i should say do the same thing with marge she's in samson but not
tech giants little tip there it's kind of helpful i like it so we've added all of these contacts
we've created two groups on the computer if we go out to icloud.com notice these contacts are
there if i go to my ipad here all of the contacts are also here if i touch groups in the top left
notice i have samson family and tech giants and i have all of those contacts there as well i'm not a
huge fan of how the groups are done on the iphone or ipad they seem not as intuitive for example if
i want to just see samson family when i touch it it just deselects it so i actually have to
touch it again and notice it only shows me those contacts there if i touch tech giants and uncheck
samson family now i see the tech giants so often a lot of times if you're on your iphone or your ipad
and you don't see all of your contacts it could just be as simple as nothing is checked there
because you're telling it not to show you those contacts so if i go back to all icloud i will
now see all of those contacts they're available for me now some other nice tricks on contacts are
changing the template of how you create a new one so when i go to the plus sign and do a new contact
notice how it has this kind of predefined template with all of these different fields in there
so i actually like to customize that to you know make it more user friendly and more what you're
looking for with your contacts and the way that you can do that is back in the preferences here
for contacts if you go to template at the top you can actually change all of these different fields
so if you want to add a work email for example we can click the plus sign and now we have a work one
same thing with work phone maybe we can choose that to work and we can customize all of these
different kind of descriptions and headers and if we go up to add field we can even add things like
anniversary dates or other dates or you can do a custom and say you know travel dates i don't
know why you do travel maybe wedding we could do wedding but i guess that would be an anniversary
either or you get the idea you can add different fields based off of your personal preference
and you can pretty much just add these as a template so that they're always there so now if
i go back to the plus sign and choose new contact it's going to have all of that additional fields
for me to quickly enter in i'm going to choose done here and notice i have these no name contacts
i can just simply press delete on the keyboard and it will then be deleted from the mac which
will also be deleted from icloud which will also be deleted from my phone my ipad and every other
device that i have now notice over here all of these contacts are purely living in icloud because
that's where i created them and that's where i'm syncing them from if i go to my aol account
my exchange account my gmail account my yahoo account there's no other contacts there except
for the one that i have associated but just because there's no contacts in here
doesn't mean that i can't create them so by highlighting gmail for example or highlighting
microsoft exchange i can click the plus sign here do new contact we'll do just joel feld
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten something like that we'll do joel dot feld at
something dot com we'll choose done there and now this contact because i was highlighted on
the exchange account i just created this account not in icloud but i created it under the exchange
so if i go to that account on the website which is outlook so if i refresh this and
go to outlook.com here is that contact it's right in there in the cloud it's got the email address
and the telephone number that i put in there if i go to my ipad here i can go to groups in the top
left let's turn off icloud so i don't see that account anymore if i touch all outlook here is
that contact with that email address and that telephone number if i edit on the ipad here i
could add another telephone number one add a bunch of nines do done and then that'll take a moment
and once i refresh this webpage here i should have another telephone number associated with
this contact on outlook.com and if i click edit contact we'll see that home address right here
and then let's go to contacts here and i could you know always add more stuff so let's add
abc one two three abc road we'll do home address of aurora minnesota one two three four five choose
done so on my ipad i can now go back to all icloud and it's now showing me a combination of my icloud
account and my outlook exchange account and if i go uncheck these if i go to all gmail i have
nothing on my my google gmail i have nothing on my yahoo so there's no contacts there so overall
that's that's pretty much contacts understanding how the the relationship of the synchronization
happens from one account and one device from your iphone or ipad or your mac or you know through the
web browser and it's uh really just knowing where your contacts are at are extremely helpful because
often i see contacts are over in this account and you have some contacts over here and it just
becomes a mess so that's pretty much contacts i hope you enjoyed watching i hope you learned
something if you did hit that subscribe button tap that little bell and we'll see you next time