![]() Now that I see Smart Groups as an extension of the Find command, I’ll have a better way to search. If I want to find a client whose last name is Madison, I don’t want to cull through people with offices on Madison Street or in Madison, Wisconsin. My particular problem today could be considered atypical-old man searching for a contact whose name he can’t remember-but I’ve wanted single-field searches before. It’s great that Contacts can search across all the fields at once, and it’s certainly best that that’s the default behavior, but what kind of database doesn’t allow searching that’s restricted to a single field? That’s a clever workaround for functionality that ought to be directly available. There’s nothing in the Help about using a Smart Group as an enhanced form of Find. ![]() Smart Groups can include contacts from any account. Every time you enter “swim” in a notes field, the contact is added to the Smart Group. For example, create a group that contains members of your swim club by creating a Smart Group for contacts with “swim” in the notes field. Apple’s description of Smart Groups in the Contacts Help gives only one example, and it matches my thinking that groups are not intended for one-time use:Ī Smart Group is created automatically based on criteria you specify. To me, Groups-smart or otherwise-are more like permanent lists it doesn’t seem right to make one and then delete it a few seconds later. I can’t say, though, that I was happy with the solution. I picked out the EE’s name in the list, and the problem was solved. I made a new Smart Group called “Colorado” defined this wayĪnd quickly had a list of just a dozen or so people. I asked for help on Twitter, and Alex Chan gave me the best answer almost Use a Smart Group? The search field in Contacts doesn’t have a little dropdown menu like that, so searches go across all fields. ![]() I had thought I could filter the results the same way you can filter search results in iTunes by artist, album, or song.īut no. Anyone with a co (upper case, lower case, or mixed) anywhere in their name, company name, or address showed up in the results-that was over half of my contacts. Unfortunately, entering CO in the Contacts search field was pretty much useless. I started collecting contact information back when I actually sent a lot of mail through the postal service, that’s the form I got into the habit of using. The problem with searching for the state is that I enter them using the two-letter abbreviations the USPS wants. I knew he was near Denver, but I didn’t know the name of the town. I knew he was in my Contacts, but finding him there turned out to be more difficult than I expected. We both knew a guy in Colorado that we had worked with several years ago, but neither of us could remember his name. We decided to give the client a few names so she could interview them herself and choose the best fit. Today, a coworker and I were asked by a client to recommend an electrical engineer.
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