10. Managing Your Contacts
In this chapter, you learn how to manage contacts on your iPad for email, messaging, and video chatting.
Viewing and Contacting Your Contacts
When you use the Mail app to send an email to someone, you can enter that person’s email address manually. That’s not a big deal—unless you send a lot of emails to that person, of course, in which case re-entering that same email address each time gets pretty annoying.
It’s also annoying to try to remember the email address of each and every person with whom you communicate. Or their phone numbers. Or their street addresses. If you have a lot of friends and family, all that information becomes overwhelming.
Used to be you might keep people’s names and addresses in a physical card file or address book. Even better (and more convenient) you can store all your contact information in your iPad’s Contacts app. It’s a lot easier to have the Contacts app remember all these names and addresses than it is to do it yourself!
Using the Contacts App
The Contacts app is preinstalled on your new iPad. You use the Contacts app to store the names, email addresses, street addresses, phone numbers, and other important information of the people you contact.
Add a New Contact
To add a new contact to the Contacts app, all you need to know is that person’s name and any contact information about that person.
Tap the Contacts icon to open the Contacts app. All your existing contacts are listed in alphabetical order.
Tap the + icon to display the New Contact panel.
Enter the person’s first and last names into the First Name and Last Name fields. (Or if you’re entering a company or organization, enter that entity’s name into the Company field.) Past this point, any information you enter is optional—that is, you only need to enter the contact’s name to create a new entry.
Tap the + next to Add Phone and enter the contact’s phone number.
Tap the + next to Add Email and enter the contact’s email address.
Scroll down, tap the + next to Add Address, and enter the contact’s address.
Add other information by tapping the + next to that field and then entering the appropriate data.
Include a photo of this person (if you have one) by tapping Add Photo and then Choose Photo, and then selecting a picture from your iPad photo library. (Alternatively, tap Add Photo and then Take Photo to take a new photo of this person.)
Tap Done to save the contact.
Edit a Contact
Sometimes you might want to add new information about a given contact or change existing info.
From within the Contacts app, tap the name of the contact you want to edit.
Tap Edit.
Tap within any field you want to edit and make the necessary changes.
Tap Done.
Delete a Contact
You can delete contacts you’re no longer interested in.
From within the Contacts app, tap the name of the contact you want to delete.
Tap Edit.
Scroll to the bottom of the contact information and tap Delete Contact.
When asked to confirm this deletion, tap Delete Contact.
Viewing and Contacting Your Contacts
The Contacts app displays the names of all your contacts in the left column. When you select a contact, information for that person or entity is displayed on the right side of the screen.
Display a Contact
By default, your contacts are listed in alphabetical order by last name.
From within the Contacts app, on the left side of the screen, tap a letter on the right edge of the list to display all contact names that start with that letter.
Tap a contact name to display that contact’s information on the right side of the screen.
Search for a Contact
If you have a lot of names in your contacts list, it might be quicker and easier to search for a specific person instead of scrolling through all your contacts.
From within the Contacts app, tap within the Search box. Use the onscreen keyboard to begin typing the person’s first or last name.
As you type, the Contacts app displays matching names. Tap to select the contact you want.
Contact a Contact
Many apps—including Mail, Messages, and FaceTime—use your contacts list to help you easily email or message your contacts. You can also send email to, message, or call (via FaceTime) a person directly from the Contacts app.
From within the Contacts app, tap to select the person you want to contact.
Tap the Mail icon to send an email to this person. (The icon might say “Home” or “Work,” if you’ve specified that person’s home or work email address.)
Tap Message to send a text message to this person.
Tap the Call icon (the phone) to initiate a FaceTime voice call with this person.
Tap the Video icon (the video camera) to initiate a FaceTime video call with this person. (This icon is grayed out if the person isn’t currently online and capable of receiving FaceTime calls.)
Tap the Pay icon to send money to this person via Apple Pay.
FaceTime and Messaging
To learn more about FaceTime and text messages, turn to Chapter 11, “Video Chatting and Texting.”