Reader Andrew Harris is in a position to learn about valuable iSync and Address Book features. He writes:
Maybe it’s my pack rat personality, but I’m wondering if there is a way to archive phone numbers and addresses of contacts I don’t need any more. I sync my RAZR with my address book from my iMac and I have names of people that I don’t keep in contact with or business contacts from another job that I don’t need. But I’m afraid to completely delete them. You never know when you might need their contact info. So I’ve been trying to figure out if I can have two address books—one to sync with my RAZR and one for archives.
Thanks to the Group feature within Address Book you don’t need multiple address books. Just click the + (Plus) button beneath the Group pane at the left of the Address Book window, create a new group called “Old Contacts,” and drag those contacts you no longer need into this group. If you’d like to create a backup of this group so you can then delete these contacts from Address Book, just drag the Old Contacts group to the Desktop. This creates a single vCard file that contains the contacts. Should you wish to retrieve these contacts, you can just drag the file back into Address Book.
Now create a new group and call it something like “For the RAZR.” Drag into this group any contacts that you’d like to be synced with your phone.
Then open iSync, select your phone at the top of the window, and click the Synchronize pop-up menu that appears under the Contacts heading. Choose your “For the RAZR” group. If you want to be sure that only those contacts with phone numbers are transferred to the RAZR, click the More Options button at the bottom of the window and make sure that the Only Synchronize Contacts With Phone Numbers option is checked.