Address Book Groups Click to see a larger image

You can create two kinds of groups in Address Book to help you organize your contacts. These are regular Groups and Smart Groups.

Groups and Smart Groups work just the same as Albums and Smart Albums in iPhoto or Playlists and Smart Playlists in iTunes. (Review this tip on creating Smart Albums in iPhoto.)

Groups are listed in the left pane. Like iPhoto and iTunes, the first group (in this case "All") lists your entire contact list. Click the plus button at the bottom of the pane to create a new Group. Hold down the Option key and the plus button turns into a gear button. Clicking the gear button creates a Smart Group.

To add contacts to regular Groups, drag contacts from the contact list (the middle pane) to the Group.

Smart Group "Family" Click to see a larger image

With Smart Groups, you create criteria and all contacts that meet that criteria are automatically added to the Smart Group. In the second illustration, the Smart Group "Family" was created with the criteria of "Name contains Spitz".

Once you create groups in Address Book, you can send e-mails to the group and the e-mail will go to every member of the group. You can also use Address Book groups when you create Smart Mailboxes in Mail.

Related Items: Address Book | Smart