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Address Books

The J Street Mailer Address Book window is accessed via the toolbar button by that name, the option on the Tools menu of the program's main window, the toolbar button or Tools menu on the compose window, or the Address Book button on the Address Tool dialog.

The address book files are stored in HTML format, like web pages. Consequently, if you want to see the contents of all of your entries at once in a columnar format (as opposed to one entry at a time the way the Address Book window shows them to you), you can use the J Street Mailer's online help facility which is a simple web browser, or you can use your own favorite web browser.

The Button Bar

New
  Lets you create a new address book file. If you choose for it to be a Public one, it will be stored in your Mailer directory and will show up in all of your J Street Mailer accounts. If you choose for it to be Private, it will be stored in the current account's directory and will not show up in any other accounts.
Open
  Lets you open an existing address book file. There is also a Delete button on the resulting dialog, which lets you delete an address book file.
Save As
  Lets you save the current address book file with a new filename.
Import
  Lets you import address book entries from a comma-delimited or tab-delimited ASCII text file. The file should have nothing in it other than the address book entries you want to import. It doesn't matter what order the file's fields are in (for example, Last Name, First Name, Email Address, etc., vs. Email Address, Last Name, First Name, etc.), because the program will show you the contents of each field and let you specify the purpose for which the program should use that piece of data. Therefore, ideally, you want the first record in the file to be one which has all of its fields filled in, so that you'll have no trouble deciding which purpose belongs to which field. If your delimited file was created properly, then you only have to make these selections for the first record; each subsequent record will correctly use the same selections.

  For example, to import an address book file (only the individual entries, not the groups) from the Post Road Mailer, use the latter program's ADR2ASC.CMD to export the entries to an *.ASC file, and that's the file you will import into the J Street Mailer. Use an editor which does not convert tab characters to spaces, such as OS/2's E.EXE, to remove the first four lines of the file (the title lines and the blank line). Then, here in the Import a delimited file dialog, assign the fields in this order: Last Name, First Name, Organization, Email Address, Nickname; then select Do not use for the next eight fields since each J Street Mailer address book entry can have only one email address and only one nickname; then Telephone Number, Do not use again since there can only be one telephone number, and then Fax Number, and Notes. Or, if your address book entries contain a lot of second telephone numbers and few fax numbers, you might want to select Telephone Number, Fax Number, Do not use, and Notes instead, and then remember that your address book entries contain two phone numbers rather than a phone number and a fax number as the field labels will specify.

  The Automatically assign nicknames radio button will make the program create a nickname for each record in the file which doesn't have a Nickname field specified. The automatically assigned nickname will be the First Name and the first character of the Last Name (or, first word and first character of the second word of the Full Name, if you specify a field named Full Name instead of fields named First Name and Last Name). Prompt when nickname does not exist or is not unique means that the program will use the contents of the Nickname field when present, and only prompt you for a nickname for entries which don't have a Nickname field and for entries which have nicknames that are the same as a previous entry in the address book file. Prompt for all nicknames means the program will suggest a nickname to use but allow you to change it, for each and every record it imports from the delimited file.

  The buttons at the bottom of the dialog let you import or skip each record individually, or import the whole file at once. Use the Close button when you have imported all the records you want from the file. The dialog will close by itself, when done, if you use the Import All button.

Settings
  Brings up the Address Book Settings dialog. See below.
Groups
  Takes you to the Address Groups page of the Address Book window, which shows you only the group entries, at which time this button's name changes to Individuals. See below.
Individuals
  Takes you to the default view of the address book file, which is the individual entries, at which time this button's name changes to Groups. See below.
Close
  Closes the Address Book window.

On the Individuals page of the Address Book window, the List by dropdown lets you determine which part of each entry will show in the list box below: Nicknames, Full names, Email addresses, or Organization. When the Short list checkbox is turned on, the only entries which will show in the list box are the entries whose individual Short list checkboxes have been turned on. When this Short list checkbox is off, then all the entries in the address book will show.

The list box displays the entries in the address book, and each entry you singleclick on will show in the right hand half of the window.

The To:, Cc:, and Bcc: buttons at the bottom let you place the selected entry's address into the Addresses: field of the compose window (opening a compose window first, if you don't already have one open); or into the Address Tool dialog, if that was the source from which you opened the Address Book window. To send a message to all of the addresses in the address book, use the To: All, Cc: All, or Bcc: All button instead.

The Virtual Folder button will create a Virtual Folder containing all of the messages you've sent to and received from the address of the selected entry.

Individual entries

Each individual entry contains two pages of information. The Nickname is what you can type in the compose window to make the program automatically enter the full address. The Email address and Full Name are self-explanatory. The Sent folder is the default folder to which the messages you write to this person will be filed after they've been sent, whenever you use the address book entry to address the message to this person. The Notes field can contain anything you want to say about this person in your address book. The Short list checkbox, when turned on, makes this person a part of this address book's Short list (see above).

One clarification is in order, in regards to the Sent folder feature here. If the address book is a public one (usable by other accounts), and the folder you select is not a "remote" folder and not the current month/year folder, then all messages which you send to this addressee using his address book entry, are going to be filed to the specified folder in the account you were in at the time you selected the folder in this Address Book window, even if you also have another folder by the same name in the account from which the message is being sent.

On the second page of each individual entry are the Title, Organization, Postal address, Phone, and Fax fields.

At the bottom of both pages are the following buttons:

Save
  Saves the contents of the entry, on Page 1 and Page 2 of the right hand side of the window, to the address book file.
Undo
  Cancels any unsaved changes you've made to the current entry.
New
  Saves the current entry and starts a new, blank one.
Copy
  Starts a new entry containing the contents of the current entry, so that you can make a few changes if you need to create a new entry which has things in common with the current entry.
Delete
  Removes the current entry from the address book file.

Address Group entries

This page of the Address Book window shows you only your address groups, not the individual entries. You create an address group when you want to be able to send a message to several or many recipients by specifying just one nickname. This page also has a Short list checkbox, which makes it display only the address groups which you have named as belonging to the address groups Short list by turning on their own Short list checkboxes in the right hand half of this window.

To create an address group, select the New button at the bottom right, and specify a Nickname and a Full Name for the group. Then, from the middle list box which contains all the entries in your address book, select the ones you want to add to the group, and press the Add member button to send those entries to the right hand list box, which is the list of Group Members. To remove an entry from the group, select it in the right hand list box and press the Remove member button.

The buttons at the bottom of the right hand side of this page of the Address Book window have the same meanings they have on the individual entry pages, except that they apply to address groups instead of to individual entries.

Address Book Settings

Book Nickname
  This lets you specify a string which you can use as the book's nickname in the compose window. Then you can address a message to every person in the whole book by simply typing the book nickname as if it were a group nickname or an individual nickname.
Name Sorting
  This lets you specify whether the entries will be sorted by the First Word or Last Word of the Full Name field, whenever you select Full names from the List by dropdown.
Default Domain
  This lets you specify a default domain for this address book file. For example, if you have an address book file for University of New York students, and most of their addresses end with @uny.edu, you can enter their addresses as just the part before the @ sign, and the program will automatically add @uny.edu to the end of any address which doesn't have an @ sign in it. Just put @uny.edu into this Default Domain field. Then if you type john.doe as the address in an entry in this address book file, the program will address the message to john.doe@uny.edu whenever you use that address book entry.