Simple address book software
There's a big, big problem for anyone hoping to use this service for business. You can also send e-mail from the service, or e-mail a record using your own e-mail client.įlexadex address book entries are comprised of two text fields: Title and Contents. Just double-click a name to open its record, which consists of two text fields: Title and Contents. As you can imagine, the result was less than perfect.įortunately, editing the entries in Flexadex is quick and simple. Then I used Gmail's contact export function to create a VCard file I could import to Flexadex. I followed the steps described in this Worker's Edge post from last August to move my contacts from Outlook to Gmail. And none of the three full-size online contact managers I tried was able to import Outlook contacts without skipping or screwing up much of the information. Outlook doesn't let you export to a file in the VCard format (.vcf). Just getting all the names in "lastname, firstname" format is impossible.Įditing Outlook contacts is more straightforward, but the entries in your Outlook address book don't travel well. Have you ever tried editing your contacts in Gmail? Whenever I try, clicking the Edit button opens some entry other than the one I'm trying to change. What really bugs me is that I wouldn't need a separate online address book if either Gmail or Outlook offered the meager contact management features I need. The only fly in the ointment is that the service doesn't use Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, so all those addresses and phone numbers are flying over the Net unencrypted.
I was about to bail on the whole project when I decided to try Flexadex, a Web-based application that gets your contact information online in a blink. (None of the three was able to manage the simple trick of importing my Gmail or Outlook contacts with anything approaching accuracy, either.) I tried WebAsyst, Keepm, and BigContacts, but all three were overkill for my meager needs. What I didn't need was a full-blown customer relationship management (CRM) application, but those were all I found at first.
What I needed was the online version of an old-fashioned paper address book. That was a good two weeks ago, and I'm still restoring the lost data. I had no choice but to reassemble the lost data phone number by phone number, address by address. Before I knew it, I had lost about half of my phone's contact entries.īackup? What backup? The entries in my Outlook and Gmail contacts were woefully outdated, compared to the contact information I stored in my iPhone. The last time I synched my iPhone, iTunes offered to sync my contacts as well.
I spent a good part of the last week searching for a simple, free, and safe place to store my contacts online.