Mac user though she may be, reader Ann Duran prefers a paper-based address book. She writes:
Every year or so I go out and buy a new address book (hard copy) and hand-write new addresses and phone numbers. Seems there should be a way to take all the listing from my Mac’s address book and print it out on paper to form a new book. Do you know a way to do this?
I know of a few ways, in fact. The first is to use Address Book’s built-in printing capabilities. From within Address Book, select the contacts you want to appear on the printed page and choose File -> Print. In the resulting Print dialog box choose Pocket Address Book from the Style pop-up menu and then choose Indexed or Compact from the Flip Style pop-up menu. Click Print and there you are.
Kind of limited, right? Right. So try this:
Download a free copy of Palm Desktop 4.2.1 for Macintosh. Open Address Book, create a group for the contacts that you’d like to print, and drag that group to the Desktop to create a vCard of your contacts. Then launch Palm Desktop, choose View -> Address List, and drag your vCard into Palm’s Address List – User Data window. Now invoke File -> Print and coo when the Paper Planner Interview dialog box appears that provides the means for creating printed pages formatted for Franklin, Day Runner, Day-Timer, or Other planners (and yes, you can also choose the binder-size of the planner you use within each brand). Print and you’re on your way.
Not quite customized enough? No problem. William Champ over on the Apple Discussions forum offers a neat way to modify Page Setup to accommodate custom paper sizes—the kind of custom paper sizes you might want to use with your day planner.