Apple’s Address Book is one of those things that gets used but is rarely a heavily use app. But here are a few plugins that will change the way you look at and use this little application.
Google Maps With Contacts (Google Maps for Address Book)
This great plug-in enables you to see addresses in Google Maps and to request directions to a particular address.
After installation the options are available in the Contextual Menu when you click on any Address Book address tab.
Importing FaceBook Contacts (Address Book Sync)
AddressBookSync is a free Mac OS X application to download profile pictures and other Facebook data to Address Book cards. This is a handy tool to keep your contacts’ pictures and birthdays updated if you have numerous Facebook friends in your Mac OS X Address Book.
Show All Emails From Contact (“Show Email From” Script)
Address Book plugin that quickly finds and lists in Mail.app all the emails you have received from a particular email address.
After installing it with the instructions on the script writers site, clicking and holding the cursor over an email label in Address Book gives you a “Show Emails from” option.
What Plug-ions do you use?
Any favorite plug-ins that you use, love and would like to share? Be sure to let us know!
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I’d love a plugin that allowed us to increase the viewable size of the contact photo. The current size seems way to small. Would love to double it. Also, it would be great if you could access an editor to clean up pics and also a way to save them if say them as an image file from the contact.
Yeah that is a good idea. Something that could tie in iphoto and address book. So instead of just one photo you could view a mini album.
Does anyone know if there is a plugin which lets you copy addresses from safari directly into address book? Would be great to highlight an address which is on a webpage in safari and with right click get the option to add it to your address book.
You make a great point. My brother and I are working on a solution for this via right click menu or a script of some sort. So you might want to subscribe via RSS (top right of page) and stay tuned.
But I did find a plugin that recognizes hcards on pages and lets you import them into Address book. You can find that here: http://zappatic.net/safarimicroformats/
Thanks for the comment!
I am amazed that nobody has mentioned a plug-in that would make batch changes to notes. For example, I send 73 friends an email about a motorcycle show and would like to make a note about that. Or I highlight 42 contacts and want to add “Sep. 15, 2009 — pinged about hockey next spring”. Call it “mini crm” — any suggestions?
Paul, if you find something let me know. Apple’s address book is an incredibly weak and useless application. When I used Outlook I thought that it is really a sick piece of software, but Apple managed to fall even below that standard.
That’s why so many people build their own address database with just some normal features in an awful database named Filemaker, quite laboriously. There must be millions of those Filemaker database remains on all those Macs. The problem is that it takes forever to create a complete system that links a useful calendar (not made by Apple or MS), mail application (not made by Apple or MS), address database (not made by Apple or MS) with activities, projects, some basic math capabilities and a word processor (not made by Apple or MS).
Indeed, I did find some code snippets to modify AddressBook as described…
http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-64569.html
I too would LOVE a script that would allow me to highlight an address and phone number on a webpage in firefox (or safari, I suppose) and with right click get the option to add it to your address book. I keep expecting it to pop up in my right click menu with each OSX update, but no such luck! Please keep me updated!
By the way, I forgot to mention that your other scripts look fantastic and I can’t wait to try them out!
I’d like to see a plugin that pulled in the latest status updates of my friends on Twitter and Facebook into my contact view.
A plugin that would search for social profiles based on email address and provide it for you would be nice as well.
What about plug-in that added “delete” to a right-click drop-down menu!
How about autocomplete entries? If I add a new contact from a company that’s already in my phonebook, the company name should autocomplete and be smart enough to ask if you want to use an existing address.
I use my Mac mainly for business. I find I go the the address book often to look up phone numbers for various contacts throughout the day. It would be nice to be able to simply dial that number straight from a pop-down menu option, hear the ring tone through the speakers, then pick up the connected phone once I hear the person on the other end pick up. You used to be able to do this through the MYOB address book decades ago – when we all had dial-up service! However, surely this could still be done through the small USB modem?