[bencurtis]

Hi,

I have about 1500 contacts in my Address book, that are all currently synced with a Nokia E60 phone via iSync.

But about 700 of them are very old, and whilst I want to keep them in Address Book, I don't want them to be synced to the phone. If I add all those contacts to a group, is there a way to tell Address Book/iSync to sync all contacts EXCEPT that group?

I know I could add all the non-old contacts to a "new contacts" group and only sync that, but the problem with this is any newly created contacts that aren't manually added to the "new contacts" group wouldn't get synced... so it's not really practical.

Any advice?

Cheers,

Ben

PS - Am running Leopard.

[zro]

Add "sync me" (or whatever) to the Note section of the cards you want to sync and use a smart group to pick them out. Then remember to add that to new cards as well.

Or export the old cards and keep them in an archive. If they aren't ones you ever use, why keep them with your active contacts?

[bencurtis]

Thanks zro,

The first option is quite clever, but the problem is I generally add contacts via my phone and am unlikely to remember to do that... it would be a lot easier if Address Book just had a "sync everything except this group" function.

Actually, your second option is probably the most viable for me... Is there a way to manage multiple Address Book libraries? I guess I could export as group vCard, and re-import them when I needed to view them, or is there a way to view group vCards or Address Book backups without actually re-importing them to the main Address Book?

Cheers,

Ben

[zro]

I've heard some folks will add them to Thunderbird or some other PIM software that they use only for access to the old contacts.

I think a smart group option for "Added after" or before would work great for this. I don't believe Address Book currently tracks that information, though, so even AppleScript or Automator wouldn't help there.