Adress Book, Excel, Google Doc, PIM, CRM: how do you manage your contacts?

[maxdof]

Hi,

I'm travelling a lot and losing my phone cell pretty often (once or twice a year). If I use it as my main Adress Book then I'm stuck. And that's what I used to do. I now want a good way to manage my contacts, CRM Customer Relation Management is surely too big for me, I might need to hack it in a Contact Relation Manager. Finally, I think I'm looking for a good PIM Personal Information Manager.
I want to gather in the same place every info you can put on a contact (name, adress, phones...) and info like: when did I met him first? where, with whom, about what... when the last time? his bro, sis... etc...
My mum and my aunts use old Adress Book they write and keep for years. My godfather do the same but writes with erasable pens...
Any idea?

M

[Laranja]

Use one big textfile. It is the best solution and there is no reason against it.

[XeutonMojukai]

My favorite way is using my Mac's Address Book program.

The honest truth about it is that it connects to every other program on my Mac that uses any kind of email or instant messaging, and I can add the person as an iChat buddy and a contact for Mail.

The best part is that I can also do the reverse: I meet someone online, start an iChat conversation with them (AIM), then get their name and stuff and put it in under their description, and poof, they're not just an iChat buddy: they're also a full-on contact.

Very useful, and often overlooked.

If Outlook does the same thing, good, but I still prefer the Mac's way of doing it.

~ David

[maxdof]

Originally Posted by Laranja

Use one big textfile. It is the best solution and there is no reason against it.

Hello, can you provide me a sample file?

[sxyshandy]

This seems to be a bit late.

Personally, I've synced my gmail with web-based Plaxo. I'm able to adapt to different phones easily. Plaxo syncs with the iMac at the office, GMail, and since I got a new laptop, it's synced to Outlook / Contacts here too. I'm too lazy to sync it with my phone -- I'm not sure if my phone will be able to handle the size (!)

[RT Wolf]

My cellphone can hook upto the computer, yours might be able to, as well. I can hook it up and just download all the contacts off of it and hten sync to either my Google Contacts in Gmail, or my Palm Desktop, or just a text file. Easiest way for me.