Skip to main content

Info Panel

The BusyContacts info panel displays the details of the selected contact.

Info Panel

Toolbar Buttons​

The Info Panel toolbar (located below the panel) includes several quick-action buttons:

  • Copy Details — Copies the contact's name, company, and primary address, email, and phone to the clipboard. See Copying Contact Info for more details.
  • Pin — Toggles the Pin state of the contact. Pinned contacts appear at the top of the contact list.
  • Edit — Switches to Edit mode.
  • Action — Opens the Action menu for sharing and other contact actions.

Photo Layout & Size Zoom​

Under Settings > Info Panel > Card Layout, you can choose between a Side by Side and Stacked layout.

Side by Side:​

Profile

Stacked:​

Profile

Clicking on the contact photo in the Info Panel cycles through three sizes — Small, Medium, and Large — with a smooth animation. You can set the default photo size in Info Panel Settings.

While viewing a contact, if you hover the pointer over a field, a link will appear enabling you to perform the default action for that field when clicked.

Mouse Over Phone

These are the default actions performed when clicking the following field types:

  • Phone — dials the contact via iPhone, Skype or third-party dialer.
  • Email — creates a new email message addressed to the contact.
  • IM Address — creates an instant message addressed to the contact.
  • Mailing Address — opens Apple Maps and displays the address.
  • Birthday or Date — opens the date in BusyCal.
  • Twitter — creates a tweet addressed to the contact.
  • Facebook/LinkedIn — opens the contact's profile page.

Note: You can disable the hover links (e.g. to select the text and copy it to the clipboard) by holding down the Command-key while hovering over a field.

Different actions can be performed on each field type. The default action is performed when using the hover links discussed above. If you click on a field label, you will see the other actions that can be performed for that particular field type.

Below are the commands available when clicking the label popups for the phone, email, and address fields.

Mouse Over
Mouse Over
Mouse Over

Primary fields​

If you have multiple fields of the same type (e.g. work email and home email, or work phone and mobile phone), you can set one of them as the Primary field. To do so, click on the field label and choose Make Primary.

Make Primary

The primary field for each type is displayed first. So, in the example above, setting the mobile phone as Primary, will move it to the top of the list of phone numbers.

Made Primary

The primary fields are used when selecting Copy Contact, printing envelopes and mailing labels, or performing a command using the Action Menu or Contextual Menu.

Creating and Editing Contacts​

You can create new contacts in BusyContacts via Quick Entry or manually:

Quick Entry

Click the Plus (+) button in the toolbar to open the Quick Entry dialog where you can enter some free-form contact data and press return. BusyContacts will parse the data, enter it into the appropriate fields, and put you into Edit mode where you can further edit the information.

Quick Add

New Contact

Select File > New Contact (or type Command-N) to creat a new blank contact card and go into Edit mode. You can then tab through the fields and enter your data.

New Contact Edit

Auto-complete​

If Auto-complete is enabled in Settings, a list of matching entries will be displayed and the text will auto-complete as you type. For example, typing "app" in the Company field will auto-fill "Apple". Auto-complete suggestions are fast and non-interrupting — they appear in the background without pausing your typing.

Auto Complete

To cancel an auto-complete suggestion, press the escape key.

Auto-cap​

If Auto-cap is enabled in Settings, the text you type in a field will be automatically capitlized when you press the Tab key.

auto-cap

Add Field​

While editing a contact, if you need to enter a field that is not showing by default, click the add field popup menu on the bottom of the info panel and choose a field to add. If you wish to add the field to all cards as a default field, you may do so in Info Panel Settings.

Address Format​

To enter an address from a country that uses a different format than yours, click on the address popup and choose the appropriate format.

For example, if your default Address Format is United States and you need to enter a German address, click on the address popup and choose Germany as the Address Format to expose the address fields that are specific to that country.

Address Format

Address Auto-fill​

BusyContacts can speed up address entry by automatically filling in address fields for you. There are two auto-fill features, both of which can be enabled in General Settings.

Auto-fill Address from Street Field​

When this option is enabled, you can type or paste a full address into the Street field and BusyContacts will automatically parse it and fill in the City, State, Postal Code, and Country fields for you. This is especially useful when copying an address from an email, a website, or another app — just paste the entire address into the Street field, press Tab, and BusyContacts will do the rest.

The auto-fill only applies when the other address fields (City, State, Postal Code) are blank, so it won't overwrite any data you've already entered. A brief activity indicator appears in the toolbar while the address is being parsed.

Automatic Postcode Lookups​

When this option is enabled, entering a postal code (ZIP code) will automatically fill in the City and State fields based on the code you entered. This is useful when you know someone's postal code but not their exact city or state. Simply type the postal code, press Tab, and BusyContacts will look up the corresponding city and state.

note

The lookup is country-aware, so it uses the address format you've selected to query the correct postal code database. Like the street auto-fill, it only fills in fields that are currently blank.

Last updated on