Windows 10. Absolute Beginner’s Guide (2016)
Part III: Being Productive
15. Keeping Up with Your Contacts in the People App
In This Chapter
• Getting to Know the People App
• Learning How to Add Contacts
• Syncing Your Online Email Contacts
• Managing Your Contacts
The People app is an essential tool for people on the go. Many of us juggle more than one device and perhaps you use a few different email accounts between your work and personal life. Each of these may include a unique set of contacts. If you find yourself connecting to multiple social networking sites, you may have yet more contacts. The People app brings together all your contacts into a single interface that can be referenced when sending emails or sharing content from your Windows 10 device. While the People app itself is not very complex, it has its own chapter due to its importance. This chapter helps you navigate through the different features of the People app. You will also learn how to link the app to sources of contacts that you may already use, saving you from entering your contacts by hand.
The People app in Windows 10 is a modern universal Windows app that can be upgraded at any time to introduce new features. So do not be alarmed if the interface has some differences from what appears in this chapter. To be sure you can easily follow the instructions in this chapter, consider reviewing some of the content in Chapter 5, “Working with Windows Apps.”
Introducing the People App
The People app, shown in Figure 15.1, is the hub for all your web contacts, both professional and personal. This hub allows you to compile names, email addresses, and phone numbers, as well as many other details for all of your contacts. Because the People app is a universal app, your contacts are synced to other Windows 10 devices when using your Microsoft account. From the People app you can initiate an email or phone call, share contact information with others, and manage your contacts.
FIGURE 15.1 The People app helps you keep track of your contacts.
Additionally, when composing a new email message or sharing something from another app, you can begin typing names of contacts that are saved in the People app. You will see contacts offered based on the characters you have typed.
The main view in the People app gives you a consolidated list of all the contacts in your personal and professional life in an alphabetized navigation pane on the left. To the right you will see the details for a selected contact. Photos are prominently presented in the People app as circles.
Tip
In Windows 10, circles represent people. You will see circles used for people in many places and apps in Windows, including your sign-in image, your account photo on the Start menu, emails, and even the music artists shown in the Groove Music app.
Note
While most apps have vastly improved since Windows 8.1, I will admit that the People app has lost some features that made it unique. In the past, the People app allowed you to link to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, which brought feeds into the People app from your contacts. The latest postings and pictures could be seen right from the People app, and you could comment or post to those social networks from the People app. Making this a universal app, and the fact that many features were underused, has resulted in a much more streamlined app that focuses on keeping track of your contacts. Perhaps additional features will make their way back into this app through future updates.
To start the People app, select it from the Start menu (see Figure 15.2), or search for people using the search box on the taskbar. If you have not yet opened the People app or you have signed in with a local account on the computer, you will likely see the invitation to add accounts shown inFigure 15.3.
FIGURE 15.2 The People app can be found under All Apps in the Start menu.
FIGURE 15.3 The People app can only show contacts it knows about.
Adding Contacts to the People App
Adding contacts can be done manually or automatically by adding accounts to the People app. If you are using a Microsoft account to sign into your device, some contacts already may be linked to that account. If you have set up the Mail and Calendar apps, you may see contacts have been added to the People app as a result as well.
To manually add contacts to the People app, follow these steps:
1. Open the People app by selecting it from the Start menu or by searching for people in the search field on the taskbar.
2. To add a contact manually, select the + button at the top of the Contacts list (refer to Figure 15.3). A new blank contact pane will open, as shown in Figure 15.4.
FIGURE 15.4 You can manually add contact information using the appropriate fields in the People app.
3. If you have multiple accounts already added to your device, you will see a field labeled Save To. Select the drop-down menu to select the account that this new contact will be associated with.
4. Add the appropriate contact information. Name, Phone, Email, and Address fields are indicated.
5. Select Other to add additional information fields to your contact. As shown in Figure 15.5, several fields are available, including company, family, birthday and anniversary, and note fields.
FIGURE 15.5 Select Other to add one of the several additional information fields to a contact.
6. Select Add Photo to use an image file that you have saved. The Photo app will open, and you can select an image file that is in your collection. If you do not add an image, the initials for the contact will appear instead.
7. Select Save to add the contact to the People app.
Note
The People app does not include a way to add groups as contacts at the time of this writing. This is a much requested feature that is expected to appear by means of a future update to the app.
To automatically import contacts to the People app, follow these steps:
1. Open the People app by selecting it from the Start menu or by searching for people in the search field on the taskbar.
2. If you have not added accounts to the People app, you can select the Add Accounts button (refer to Figure 15.3) and jump to step 4. If you do not see the Add Accounts button, select the See More ellipsis (...).
3. Select Settings. The Settings pane will appear as shown in Figure 15.6. Any currently linked accounts will appear here. Select Add Account.
FIGURE 15.6 The Settings pane will display any accounts that are already linked to the People app.
4. The Choose an Account pop-up window appears, as shown in Figure 15.7. Select one of the online account types and follow the prompts to add your credentials. Chapter 16, “Setting Up the Mail App,” considers in more detail the steps involved when adding an account.
FIGURE 15.7 You can add several types of online accounts to the People app.
Note
The People app includes a link in the Settings pane that invites you to Get Social Apps. The intention is to import contacts from social network apps like Twitter or Facebook. This feature is not working at the time of this writing and will no doubt be fixed by means of an update to the app.
Managing Your Contacts
As you add accounts and perhaps even some manually entered contacts, your list of contacts will quickly grow. Finding your contacts, editing contacts, and even sharing contacts are all basic tasks that you will need to know. Those tasks and others are considered in this section.
Locating Your Contacts
Locating contacts is certainly an important task. Whether it is to check a number, send an email, or just check a note you have added to the contact, locating contacts quickly is important.
To locate a contact, follow one of these methods:
• Type in a first or last name, or a company name into the Search field. As shown in Figure 15.8, you will see matching contacts immediately begin to appear and filter as you add additional characters.
FIGURE 15.8 Use the Search tool to quickly locate specific contacts in the People app.
• Select a letter from the alphabetized contact list. The last will show only letters and numbers. Select a letter to jump to that portion of the list. By default the people app lists all contacts by first name—so Alicia Thomber would be listed under A and not T.
Modifying or Sharing a Contact
Contacts can be edited, deleted, linked, and shared. All of these tools are available from the contact information pane.
To use tools for modifying a contact, follow these steps:
1. Open the People app by selecting it from the Start menu or by searching for people in the search field on the taskbar.
2. Select a contact. The details for that contact will appear to the right.
3. As shown in Figure 15.9, you can select the Edit, Link or See More (...) buttons. When See More has been selected, Share Contact and Delete also become available.
FIGURE 15.9 Choose from tools that allow you to edit, link, share, or delete a contact in the People app.
The tools that you can use with a selected contact are pretty straightforward:
• Edit—Edit allows you to modify the contact details. Review the steps considered earlier in the chapter for manually adding a contact for more information on the information fields that can be modified.
• Link—Link allows you to combine different instances of the same contact that may have been imported by means of different accounts. Perhaps you have an Outlook account that lists an email, while an iCloud account just gives a phone number. Select Link to combine the two contacts into a single contact in the People app.
• Share Contact—Share Contact will take all of the details minus the image and send it as an attached .VCF formatted file by email.
• Delete—Delete will ask you to confirm your decision to delete a contact. Besides removing the contact from the People app, the deletion will be synced to the account that provided the contact.
Filtering Contacts
Once an account has been added to the People app, it will by default be added to the Mail and Calendar apps and vice versa. There are actually a couple of ways that you might decide to filter your contacts. Perhaps you do not want to see contacts from an account that has been linked elsewhere to appear in the People app. On the other hand, you may want contact information in the People app, but prefer not to receive synced calendar entries or emails from that account appearing in other apps. This section considers both of those scenarios.
If you do not wish the email or calendars to sync from an online account you can limit the sync to just your contacts by following these steps:
1. Open the People app by selecting it from the Start menu or by searching for people in the search field on the taskbar.
2. Select the See More ellipsis (...) that appears at the top of the contact list.
3. Select Settings. The Settings pane will appear (refer to Figure 15.6). Any currently linked accounts will appear here.
4. Select the account listed in the Settings pane that you wish to limit and then select Change Mailbox Sync Settings for the account.
5. Look for Sync Options, as shown in Figure 15.10. Turn the features of the online account to Off that you do not wish to sync, and make sure that Contacts is switched to On.
FIGURE 15.10 Turn off the sync options for an online account that you do not wish to be synced to Windows 10.
6. Select Done when finished to close the account window. You may see the account listed in the Mail or Calendar apps, but the data from the account will not sync to or from those apps if the Sync option is turned to Off.
If you wish to prevent contacts from appearing in the People app, you can use the Filter Contacts pane by following these steps:
1. Open the People app by selecting it from the Start menu or by searching for people in the search field on the taskbar.
2. Select the See More ellipsis (...) that appears at the top of the contact list.
3. Select Settings. The Settings pane will appear (refer to Figure 15.6).
4. Select Filter Contact List. The Filter Contacts pane will appear, as shown in Figure 15.11.
FIGURE 15.11 You can prevent synced accounts in Windows 10 from adding contacts to the People app.
5. Uncheck any accounts that you do not want syncing contacts into the People app.
6. Select Done when finished.
The Absolute Minimum
• The People app links to your online email accounts to show you all your contacts in one place.
• The People app can sync contacts from Google, Exchange servers, Outlook, iCloud, and Yahoo! to name a few online account types.
• You must supply the username (or email address) and password you use to sign in to the online accounts you want to see in People.