Make an Address Book

You can use OpenOffice.org to help keep track of all your contact details. However its more powerful than being a mere 'phone book', you can use the address book to automate tasks to assist you in printing addresses on envelopes, sending mass email outs etc.

There are a couple of ways to set up an address book. You could, for example, set up a new database and store your contact information there. Alternatively you could also use a spreadsheet, and create the appropriate fields to store the contact details there.

Both these methods are useful but require you set everything up from the beginning which can take a while. especially if you have not set up a spreadsheet or database before. However there is an easier way to do it using an OpenOffice.org Wizard.

Creating a new address book

First you must have OpenOffice.org open, then from the 'Tools' menu choose the Mail Merge Wizard:

You will be presented with the Mail Merge Wizard: 

Choosing either of the first two options is fine for creating a new address book. We are not actually going to use this wizard for doing a 'mail merge'. We just want to use it as a shortcut for creating a new address book. So in my case I am just going to lkeave this page at the defaults and press 'Next>>' and you will see this:

This screen also doesn't matter as this is more for those wanting to do a mail merge. We just want to set up the address book, so lets skip forward and press 'Next>>'  :

Now we are getting closer to the action. Here we actually get to select the adress book we wish to use, and because we dont have one the wizard will offer to set it up for us. So, press 'Select Address List' and you will be presented with a list of databases you can choose from.

We want a new one, so we press 'Create':

Now we actually have a screen which will allow us to start storing our contact information. Here we can start with one or more entries (actually we can also just create an 'empty' address book, but its useful here to start entering information). So we will fill in one entry. You just need to click on the empty spaces and fill in the appropriate data. Here is an example:

Once we have entered our first entry we can press 'OK' :

The above window is asking us to choose where to save the address book file. You can browse around your computers files and folders using the Places menu on the left. You should save the file somewhere you can easily find it later when you need to access it quickly. I am just going to save the file in the default place, so I just type a name for the file in the 'name' field :

Now I press 'Save' and I see that the address book has been saved:

We don't wish to mail merge so we will press cancel and move onto adding more entries to the address book.

Adding more entries

To add more entries to the address book you have to open the file you just created. You can do this from the OpenOffice.org menu :

Now you have a dialog open which you can use to browse your computer until you find the file :

You will notice that file has been appended with the suffix 'csv'. Once selected, press 'Open' and you will be presented with an 'import' window:

Just press 'OK' and you will see a spreadsheet infront of you:

Now, you can add new information to this document. So every time you have a new contact you can add it to the spreadsheet by simply typing the persons name and contact information in each appropriate field. You can also edit the information that is already in this document. So I will just type some entries in like so :

Now I can save the document when I am happy with the list I have added. Remember I can add or delete entries from this list at anytime. I press the floppy disc icon to save the document:

I then get presented with a window that asks me if I am sure I wish to save this document as some data might be lost:

As long as you haven't done anything strange with the entries you won't need to worry about this. So press Yes to confirm you do actually want to save this file as a csv file (which is the original format for the file). The file should be saved and no feedback is given to confirm this.

What can you do with this file?

With the file you have just created you can actually complete the mail merge process using the same wizard. This allows you to print form letters to the entire contact list, or selections of the list. It also assists you in sending mass emails to the contact list.

If you wish to use this file to do a Mail Merge it is better to change the format of the file to a spreadsheet. To do this first make sure the csv file is open in OpenOffice.org (see above step), and then from the file menu choose 'Save As...':

The following window should appear:

Click on the dropdown menu that currently displays 'Text CSV (.csv)' and choose 'OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods)' :

Now press 'Save'. You can now use your new file for keeping a list for contacts and you can also use this easily with the OpenOffice.org Mail Merge.