Is there an Outlook contact program that is household based?

[Curious Sue]

The Outlook 2007 program that I am currently using is specific person or
business based. In other words, it is meant for business use only.

I am searching for a program that is household based. The program I need
should have the ability to list a household as a contact and within that each
person at that address would have his/her own cell phone, birthday, work
address, etc... Right now I have each household member listed as his/her own
contact. At this rate I will run out of space in my address book within the
year as almost half my contacts are family and/or friends and most of them
have between three and six members.
Does anyone know of a program where this is viable?

 

[Gordon]

At this rate I will run out of space in my address book within the
year

I doubt it - the new 2007 format pst file can run up to 20 GB by default -
that's probably more addresses than people who live in New York....

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

1. you won't run out of space - outlook can hold many thousands of contacts.
2. You could make a custom contact or enter the Head of Household as the
company name or make separate contacts as needed and link them together
using contact linking (tools, options, contacts options to show the contact
field).
3. otherwise, there is no 'household based' outlook version.

Honestly, you don't need a separate contact for each person - make one for
the family unit, put the people you contact by email most often in the email
address fields - i.e., do you send email to both mr and mrs smith and little
jill and johny, or just mrs smith? I only send to mrs smith, so her email
is email1. (I don't care how many email addresses she has - I only record
the one she uses with me.) The kids names go in the children field and if I
want to record their birthdays, I put it in notes and may make an event on
the calendar.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



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[Curious Sue]

Unfortunately my Blackberry only holds 1000 contacts and I am already well
over 600. I need my general business, work business, family and friends, and
church business contacts all on there. Church contacts are over 300 families
with 1 to 8 persons in each family. If each member of the church is listed as
a separate contact I'm out of room before I get started.

 

[Gordon]

Unfortunately my Blackberry only holds 1000 contacts and I am already well
over 600. I need my general business, work business, family and friends,
and
church business contacts all on there. Church contacts are over 300
families
with 1 to 8 persons in each family. If each member of the church is listed
as
a separate contact I'm out of room before I get started.

That's obviously a Blackberry problem, not Outlook!

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Do you actually use all those contacts from your BB? Or do you just want
them there "just in case" ? If you are using the Desktop manager use
categories to sync and only sync the contacts you reasonably expect to need
from the BB - ie, if you haven't spoken to Uncle William in 2 yrs and he
doesn't use email, do you really need his contact on your BB? (BES syncs
them all - I hate it as I can't find the people I actually contact from my
BB as easily.)

Why would you make a separate contact for each family member? Kids should be
on with their parents, use the notes field if you need info about the kids.
Adult children still living at home might warrant a separate contact,
although I'd wait till they had a place of their own unless I actually
called or emailed them specifically.





--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
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