Merging contacts on your iPhone and iPad.

Merging contacts on your iPhone and iPad.

Do you a contact problem on your iOS device?  Do your duplicates stress you out??   It’s practically inevitable that duplicate contacts appears on your iOS device either by accident, typos, through sharing vCard information with others, or from something as basic as a contact changing their name and addresses, for which an additional entry gets added. Prior to iOS 7, there was no simple way of handling multiple contact entries on your iOS device, but that has finally changed, and now there is an easy way to merge those contacts directly and easily!

Ok, this will be fantastic for those of you that experience DCS!  Because this is done on your iOS device, you do not need to to sync to iCloud, iTunes  or any other computer for the change to take effect, you simply make the change directly on your iOS device, and iCloud, takes care of pushing the changes automatically to any other iOS and OS X devices that use the same Apple ID.

I've got screen captures just below to assist.
This fantastic new feature is not actually called Merge, but rather Link Contacts, which is possibly why it’s  often missed, or overlooked, regardless, here is what you do!

From your iOS device, tap the Contacts app (or on your iPhone, tap the phone app) , open the contact you wish to merge another duplicate contacts with.
    Next, tap on the “Edit” button
    Scroll down toward the bottom to find Link Contacts, then tap on the green plus icon “(+) link contacts…” to link/merge the contact with another.
    Then, locate the contact to merge (either a duplicate or a changed addressee) and tap on the name, then tap on “Link” in the corner
    Repeat for more than one duplicate, otherwise tap on “Done” to finish the merging

Yeah!!  This instantly links/merges all contact details from the two (or more) contact cards into a single contact entry, it does not overwrite any information, it simply merges all details into a single contact.

In the screenshots below, the address information for multiple AT&T contacts has been merged into a single card. The first contact edited will be the one that accepts the merged details:




Once you click “Done”, there will only be a single contact for the details you merged (linked), in this example I've Merged/Linked two AT&T accounts.

One great thing about the “Link Contacts” method is that although it merges the contacts,  it can very easily be  undone if you decide to unmerge/unlink the contact details. To do that, just go back to the contact in question, tap on “Edit” and then tap on the red (-) icon along the linked contacts details.

There are other ways to Merge/Link contacts,  but I'm not going to address those here.  Today I simply wanted to point out a great feature that was added to iOS 7.

So now it's up to you!  If you are loaded with duplicate contacts, you've been given the green light to get rid of them!  It may take some time, but will definitely be worth it.  Free you device of DCS!

Until next time, best to you and your fewer contacts...:).

Merging contacts on your iPhone and iPad.

Smartphone (Handphone)

Read more ►

How to find your lost iPhone.

(This story is told through the eyes and words of an iPhone)

The memories are foggy as to how my owner lost me, but that's not really what's important here.  What is important is that she found me, thanks to a really knowledgeable and awesome dude (The MacMentor), and a really smart mom (who kept her Apple ID and Password safe).

So here's what I remember...I was having a blast with my owner, down at the beach.  She was living it up, tanning and having fun with her friends, it was a great day!  A few hours go by, the sun started to set, and the next thing I know, she's gone!  Left without me.  I was so sad!  I didn't know what to do, so I waited, and waited and waited.  Thankfully I had a full battery charge.  My only hope was that my owner (who asked to remain anonymous here) remembered her Apple ID, and password.

So here's what happened next (I know because she told me).  My owner was so nervous that her mom was going to go berserk, but thankfully she has a Mac Guy who could help her, his name is The MacMentor (aka, Geoff Horwitz).  She called The MacMentor and told him of her terrible situation and asked him what to do.  The MacMentor asked her if she knew her Apple ID.  She gave him the ID she thought she used, and The MacMentor went to his trusty Mac, opened up Safari and proceeded to go to http://icloud.com.

Once there, he entered the Apple ID and Password my owner gave him (hidden for obvious reasons).  Sadly, he got a message back from iCloud that the Apple ID and password had not been set up!  The MacMentor shook his head in disbelief.  If iCloud had not been set up, how on earth would I (the iPhone) be found?  The MacMentor was sure that my owner had set up her iCloud, so he had her call her mom.  What happened next was just plain awesome!  Thankfully mom had written down the Apple ID and password my owner used for iCloud.  So, mom opened up Safari, went to iCloud.com and signed in with my owners Apple ID and password.

When mom did that she came to the screen capture above.  Next, mom pressed the Find my iPhone button which took her to a map, similar to the one below, but for security reasons, the map below is simply being used as an example.

It's a little hard to see, but on the top right of the screen capture above, there's a window with me, the iPhone, and underneath three buttons.  Play Sound, Lost Mode and Erase iPhone.  Mom was able to locate the iPhone on the beach where my owner had forgotten me, but it was dark out, and it would be really hard to find me!  So, mom called The MacMentor, and he told her to press the Play Sound button (I tell you, that MacMentor dude is a genius!).  This story keeps getting better!  You see, thankfully my battery still had plenty of charge, and I was still on.  So when mom pressed the Play Sound button on iCloud I started making a loud sonar noise.  And low and behold, a few minutes later, even though it was dark, my owner and her friends heard me calling her and she came and got me!  Yeah!  I love stories with a happy ending, and thanks to the wonderful MacMentor, and a resourceful mom,  I didn't get washed up in the tide and lost at sea!

So the moral of the story is this.  If you own an iPhone, make sure you sign in to iCloud, and make sure you remember your Apple ID and password!  And it would help if you knew The MacMentor as well...:).

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to keep your iPhone and iPad safe, using iCloud!

Read more ►

Great Apps for your iPhone and iPad

Happy February!  Those of you that have "Liked" The MacMentor on Facebook have had the benefit of viewing my App and Device of the Week posts that I started this past January.  The goal of the weekly postings is to make you all more aware of the great tools available to you for your iPhones and iPads.

The first App of the week, is one that I recently started using.  It's called Scanner Pro.

If you were able to view my posting in early January, and you went to download ScannerPro, it was the AppStore's App of the Week, first week of January, and it was FREE!  If you missed it, it is still 50% off, but that ends Feb 4th, so hurry!  Scanner Pro is a great app that allows you to quickly and easily scan paper documents and save them into PDF format.

Once the device has been scanned, it can be easily uploaded to Evernote, Google Drive.  For those of you that use iCloud, the document can be uploaded there as well!  It can also be emailed.

It's a great tool for those of you looking for a quick efficient way to get your documents onto your iOS device, then either uploaded to your cloud drive(s) or emailed.

Week two of January brought us another great app, this one is however limited to those of you that own Mac's, as it works in conjunction between your iOS device and your Mac computer.  It's called Command-C.  Those of you familiar with Mac shortcuts, know exactly what Command-C does, it copies something into the Mac memory.   

Command-C is downloaded to both your Mac and iOS device, on your Mac, it sits on the Menu bar (see pic below).  When you capture something using Command-C, you can easily copy it to your iOS device!  Very, very cool!  

It's a super quick, and easy way to copy notes or other text between your devices.

Week 3 of January 2014 I decided to name Box (of Box.com), the App of the week.  Why you ask, good question!  Box.com is a great site for cloud storage.  When you sign up on-line, you get 10GB of free space.  What makes the Box app so awesome is that after you download it to your iPhone, iPad or both, your free space goes from a nice 10GB of free space to an incredible 50GB of free space.  That's right people 50GB!  That's something to smile about.  

Box has a super easy to use interface.  You can have your files listed separately, or in folders.  You can easily create new folders, or upload pictures and videos.  

You can download files for offline viewing, easily search your files, or access the other OneCloud apps (see the screen capture below).  

You can also easily e-mail or text a document.  

The easy to use interface, coupled with the incredible 50GB of free space could earn this app the App of the Month!

The last App of the week for January 2014 is an app geared for business/project users.  The app is BaseCamp.  

BaseCamp is an awesome tool for project teams.  If you've ever used Microsoft Project, you know how challenging it can be for the lay person.  BaseCamp is just the opposite, it's easy (not unlike your devices!).  BaseCamp lets you check on your project from virtually anywhere.  You can see the latest project updates, jump in on discussions and post your thoughts, view progress as team members complete to-do lists.  Everything in your project is available, helping you make important decisions where ever you may be!

So there they are, your January 2014 Apps of the week.  I'd love to hear from you, and get your choice for which App should be the App of the Month!  

My goal with the Apps of the week are to broaden your horizons as to what is available to you so you can be more productive with your iPhone and iPad.  I hope you enjoyed the weekly posts, as well as the more in-depth blog write up here.

Until next time (which will be very soon!)...best to you and your devices!

Read more ►