It’s one of the reasons I enjoy teaching beginner classes. I love it when someone says “I didn’t know I could do that!” So today’s column has some of those “I didn’t know I could do that” tips that have come up in recent classes. Maybe there is one that you didn’t know either and you will be inspired to experiment more.
And I’ll start with one that I didn’t know until someone else showed it to me.
Sending Censored vCards
This has to do with sending information from your Address Book to another person. First some background for those who may never have done this at all. Address Book will allow you to turn any entry into a vCard that allows you to send the information contained therein to another person.
To do that you click on the name in the Name column and drag it to your desktop.
Select name from name column and drag to desktop
The vCard would look like this on your desktop.
A sample vCard
Then you just drag that icon into the body of an email and send it to someone and trash the copy on your desktop.
But here is the deal. That vCard might have something on it that you don’t want to share. Perhaps your note that says “She never gets anywhere on time.” You can create a duplicate card and send that. What a waste of time. You can delete some entries, send the card, and then put them back. Equal waste. Or you can try this cool trick.
Say I want to send the vCard for the following contact to someone, but I only want to send some of the information.
Address Book entry with top icon emphasized
Highlight the name, click on the small vCard icon at the top of the Address Book window and use that icon to drag the card to your desktop.
Close Address Book.
Click once on the vCard on your desktop so it is highlighted. Then hit the space bar. This will give you a preview image of what is on the vCard that you will be sending to someone.
In this example, your notes, the assistant’s name, and his homepage have been deleted from the copy that you are forwarding to another person. Now you may be more comfortable sending to a third party.
