~1.8 Megs
Version 2.1
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- WHAT'S NEW
- HTML Export
Export your entire database to a web site. All you categories and information become available via a set of HTML pages.
- Multiple Categories & Indexes
The old Cool Address book allowed you to label records as Mail or Business. This new version allows you to have as many categories as your hear desires. You can access any of these categories as an index from the Index menu. You will be presented with a list of the cards, typing the name of the record you want will quickly scroll you to that record.
- Cool Interface With Flavors
Click on the PREFS button at the top of the screen to pick your flavor of interface. You will also note that all the sounds have been updated to give you audio feedback for what you are doing. However these can also be turned off in the PREFS screen.
- Clickable E-mail And Web Addresses
The labels for the e-mail and web are pop-up menus. You can choose a URL or an e-mail address and the appropriate program will be launched to handle it.
- Extremely Fast Search
The search function immediately returns all records that match your query. The find again command in the Edit menu will find matches for your query in each record. The search is really screaming fast, I think you will enjoy it.
- Easier Import
You can import your other ASCII based files easily. Cool Address Book will attempt intelligently guess the right location for your information, but still allow you full control about how you want to import your file.
- Better Auto-formatting
All appropriate fields have auto-capitalization for easier entry. The phone number field will auto format you phone number for you also. The phone number formatting can be turned off in the preferences.
- More Room For Addresses
There is now a Company field. The Street field also now put in parentheses instead of disappearing when a PO Box is used.
- Special Next And Prev Buttons
If you hold down the option key while clicking on the Next or Prev buttons you will be taken to the next record in the last used index or the last search. Holding down the mouse on these buttons quickly flips through the records until you release the mouse.
- Easier Registration
You can now use a credit card to register the program. All your information is collected in the registration form (which you can get to by choosing "About Cool Address Book" from the Apple menu). It is then encoded so you can safely send it in an e-mail.
OTHER FEATURES:
- Auto-dial Phone Numbers
The Phone label is a pop-up menu and will allow you to auto-dial any phone number in a record.
- Export To Standard Ascii File
Cool Address Book can export its information to a standard ASCII file.
- Multiple Print Out Formats
You can print out two different types of envelope formats and 3 different types of address book formats.
- Special Notes Field
Store fully styled text with each record.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Will there be an OS X version?
No, The plans have changed here after Apple announced the features of their address book in 10.3. They have greatly improved the printing, and it is obvious that address information is going to be a central part of OS X. Having your addresses in any 3rd party application is going to make it difficult for you to enjoy all the benefits of OS X. So, for now anyway, I have decided not to port Cool Address Book to OS X. But instead I am encouraging people to export their information to OS X. Apple has an article that can help here.
I do plan to update several other programs, and have done some work here. Things are just progressing slowly because my full time job keeps me rather swamped.
How do I import my addresses in to OS X Address Book?
Apple has an article that can help here.
How do you get the URL's or the E-mail addresses to work?
The label for the E-mail field is underlined. If you click and hold on this label a pop-up menu will appear with all the email addresses in it. Choosing an address from this menu will launch your default email program and open a new message window with the address filled in. If this does not work for you it probably means that you don't have a default email client defined.
How to define a default email program and browser in Mac OS 8.5
Open the Internet Control panel and click on the E-mail tab. At the bottom of the screen you will have a pop-up menu of email clients to choose from. Choose the client you want to use as your default. Then click on the Web tab and select your favorite browser from the pop-up menu at the bottom of the screen.
How to define a default email client in earlier versions of the system.
If you have an earlier version of the system softer it is a little more difficult. Search your hard driver for a copy of a program called "Internet Config". Open this program and click on the "Helpers" icon. Scroll through the list of choices until you find the "http" and "https" listings. Click on each of these and then click on the "change" button. Then click on the "choose helper" button and select the program you want to use as your default browser. Then scroll down to the "mailto" listing and go through the same procedure as before to choose your favorite email client as your default.
How do I import my records from version 1.5?
Importing records is very easy. First open version 1.5 and export the entire address book to a text file. Then open version 2 and import the text file by choosing "Import File" from the "File" menu.
NOTE: There is a bug in version 1.5 that was just recently discovered. It does not export the business and mail categories correctly. When you export your address book to a text file, version 1.5 marks all of the records in the export file like the record you are currently viewing. To get around most of this problem you can export just part of the address book at a time. For example, you can go to a business record and then export only the business records. Then you can go to a non-business record and export all the non-business records. Then you can import both of these files into version 2.
How do I import my information from another program?
The first step is to export your information to a plain ASCII text file. This means all your information will be in a file where each record is separated by a return character and every field is separated by a TAB character. Spreadsheets often use this format when saving information to a plain text file. Then you import the file by choosing "Import File" from the "File" menu. The program will walk you through choosing where you want to store each field of information.
Some people run into a problem with the very first step. They cannot get their information into any good text file because the program they have been using stores everything in free text. In other words, most the information is in one big block. There is no way to distinguish the street address from the city and state. The is no good work around for this. The best you can do is open up both programs and start a long copy and paste process. The good news is that Cool Address Book exports very nice text files, so you should not have to ever worry about this again.
How do I register?
Registering the program is very easy. Simply choose "about Cool Address Book..." from the Apple menu. This will bring up a little window with basic information about the program. There will be a "Registration" button on this window. Click this button. Registration information about the program will be displayed. Click on the "View Form" button. This will take you to a form for you to fill out to send your registration payment.
Once I receive your form and payment, I will email you a registration code. You can use this code to register the program and stop the annoying reminder messages.
The program supports payment by credit card. You can enter your information in, and then Cool Address Book encodes your information so you can send it over email without the danger of having your credit card number swiped by someone else. Of course, if you rather you can print out the form and mail it to me.
Is there a Windows version?
No, I am sorry. This program is Macintosh only.
How do I customize the print-outs?
Right now there is not way to customize the print-outs. I am working on this for later release. However, if you have a format you would like added to the default choices, please send me the exact specifications and I will try to get it added.
The program is only dialing half the number. What is wrong?
Only two people have reported this bug. One of them says that it dialed fine for a while, but then quit. Both people have had some of the brand new boxes with built-in modems. I have not been able to recreate this problem, but I would like to get it fixed. If you are having this problem, please contact me.
VERSION HISTORY
2.1 (Nov. 18, 1999)
- A correct error message is now displayed if the user tries to import a text file that is already open in another application.
- Fixed spelling errors in the balloon help.
- Fixed a bug introduced in version 2.0.9 which prevented the ability to print just one record.
- Change the print output slightly to conform better to non-US postal codes.
2.0.9 (Oct. 28, 1999)
- Help section expanded and spelling errors corrected.
- Address book now sorts itself before any printing anything.
- Fixed a bug that caused some records to label themselves incorrectly when importing them.
- Fixed the flashing display when importing foreign ASCII files.
- Fixed a typo in the registration screen.
2.0.8
- Fixed a few small display glitches on the preferences screen.
- Added the ability to set the default font for the edit fields.
- Fixed a bug that kept PowerBooks from being able to dial phone numbers using the internal modem.
- Added the ability to specify a default dialing method in the preferences.
- Fixed a small bug when doing a search from the prefs screen.
- Fixed some bugs around the registration process and the display of registration information.
- Fixed small bug in HTML export.
2.0.7
- Small enhancements to make it ready for final release.
2.0 beta 6
- Fixed problems of phone and email buttons moving around. This bug was introduced in beta 5.
- The search speed was dramatically increased for address books containing thousands of records.
- Added more instructions to the registration form and the help section.
- Added two new commands to the Edit menu ("Copy Address" and "Copy All Contact Info") which allow you to easily copy information from a record in this program to paste into another program, like a word processor.
- Added the ability to speak the selected text on a whim that it might be helpful to someone who would like to have a long notes field read to them.
- Added more Command key shortcuts for the menu commands.
- Other minor changes.
2.0 beta 5.1
- Made street address line two lines long to handle bigger addresses.
- Fixed bugs in HTML export involving business names in the indexes and case sensitivity in folder names.
- Fixed terminology in sorting messages to reflect new sorting method.
- Fixed bug in importing files which use the company name.
- Fixed a bug in the indexes when the index contains over 2000 records.
- Fixed a bug in the category tool when there are over 2000 records.
- Fixed color display problems when using over 2000 records.
- Increased the speed of building special indexes when the address book contains thousands of records.
- Made the card number bring up a dialog box when clicked that allows you to jump to any record by the record number.
- Add Record Number information when importing records.
- Made the application save automatically more often to greatly increase the speed of certain operations when there are more than 1000 records.
2.0 beta 4
- Fixed a bug that kept some ASCII files from importing properly.
- Starting using the Company name as the record name if the company name field was filled in.
- Added Label Printing capability
- Made a way for people using older email clients to still use the electronic email registration method.
2.0 beta 3
- Fixed bug that kept you for editing the categories.
- Fixed bug that would not let you delete the last record.
- Fixed the registration form not to default to the computer name as the name.
2.0 beta 2
This version is expected to become the full release. Several things have been added and several things corrected from the first version.
- Import from older versions of Cool Address Book files now properly imports the date modified instead of setting it to the current date.
- Importing Cool Address Book 2.0 files now works 100% of the time
- Full Flavor preferences have been added.
- Help section and balloon help added.
- Several other small bug fixes
2.0 beta 1
- First release of the totally redesigned address book.
- Too many new features to discuss. The address book was rewritten from scratch.
1.5 beta
- This version was never replaced and became the full release. Nice for the time, but grew very outdated looking. One bug that was only recently discovered is that it does not export it's Mail and Business categories correctly.
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Cool Address Book 2.1 ($10)
