Managing Personal Contacts

soyMAIL provides an elementary but functional contacts facility that allows email addresses, telephone numbers, postal addresses and description information to be stored against entry names.

These contact names are provided as a selection list on the message page and can be added to any of the destination address fields by selection and clicking of an appropriate button.

Contacts may be added to the list in one of three ways:

- From the access (read) page using the dialog.

- Using the maintenance (this) function to manually add, edit and delete entries.

- Using the and dialogs to incorporate contact detail from external LDIF sources (e.g. Mozilla/Firefox address books).

Contacts Maintenance

The entry field requires an indentifying name on its first line. Subsequent lines may contain additional text, providing any descriptive information. Note that multiple email addresses may be provided in the email address(es) field against any one entry, one address per line, allowing a basic mailing list to be constructed and maintained. This may not be portable to other address book environments. The postal address field is intended for a geographic address. Follow the address row guidelines if you intended to export the contact information in LDIF. The telephone numbers are self-explanatory.

> | Entry | Email Address(es) | Postal Address
> | Mark Daniel (soyMAIL author) | "Mark Daniel" <mark.daniel@vsm.com.au> | Street: City: State: Post/ZIP: Country: | PO BOX 1500 Edinburgh SA 5168
> | Telephone: Mobile: Fax:

Any existing entries are listed below these text entry areas.

Each has an associated radio checkbox allowing it to be selected for an appropriate operation by the dialog.

To modify an existing entry check the asociated radio box and select the button. To delete an entry check the radio box and use the button. To save the current contact information, including any changes made to an entry being edited, select the button.

No modification (import, merge, delete, edit or new entry) is permanent until is used.

Changes may be undone prior to that by selecting the main menu button or moving from the contacts maintenance page.

LDIF Import/Merge/Export

soyMAIL maintains its contact information using the open standard LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LDIF). Many email agents can produce or consume this format (e.g. Mozilla/Firefox). In addition, many tools exist to convert between proprietory formats (e.g. Outlook) and LDIF. This means soyMAIL contact information should be able to be loaded from other email agents and in turn used to populate other agents. This does not imply 100% compatibility!

To load soyMAIL contact information using an LDIF file generated by another email agent click the button. A file browse dialog will be presented. Select the LDIF file and then click the button again. CAUTION: This contact information will completely replace the current soyMAIL contacts. Check the status panel for any errors or warnings.

To merge soyMAIL contact information with an LDIF file click the button. A file browse dialog will be presented. Select the LDIF file and then click the button again. This contact information will be a combination of the current soyMAIL contacts and those from the LDIF file. Check the status panel for any errors or warnings.

To generate an LDIF file containing soyMAIL contact information click the button. Save the resulting page using the browser save-as dialog. Ensure it is saved as text not HTML. Choose a file name with a .LDIF extension. The ¤¤¤ link to the right of the button allows a browser right-click, save-target-as dialog to be initiated and the part easily saved to storage local to the browser system.