ok, I give up: HOW do you use KAddressBook

[dbaker]

I've been procrastinating about setting up an address book on my system (I only want it for storing email addresses), and now I realise I've had good reason to.

So this is how it started: I was in KMail, and I decided to try clicking on the 'add to address book' that you get when you right-click on an email address. I got this message:
"You must create an address book before adding a contact. Do you want to create an address book?"
So I clicked yes, and it brought up this massive list of weird options, none of which I know anything about. "KDE address book (traditional)" looked sort of normal to me, so I clicked it and was totally overwhelmed. I realised I didn't really know what I was doing.

I then tried 'KDE accounts", and in spite of filling in the filename and display name fields (with random stuff, cause I didn't know what to put there) the 'ok' button was disabled. At this point I realised I had absolutely no clue what I was doing so I started googling. The only information I could find about setting up an address book on KDE seemed to have no relevance to my version of Kubuntu or anything I could see on my system:
http://userbase.kde.org/KAddressBook_4.4
After narrowing google search results to 'within the last year', which I hoped would help, I literally couldn't find anything that explained how to set it up.

I then realised I didn't have KAddressBook installed (I think I removed it early on when I was trying to get rid of apps I thought I'd never use), so I installed it and tried all the things I'd tried previously again. No difference. (by the way, is it necessary to have Kontact installed to use KAddressBook? cause I think I removed that too)

Finally I had a look around inside KAddressBook itself.

I tried 'file > new > add address book' in KAddressBook and had the same issue as I'd had with trying to add an address book from other parts of KDE: a great big dialog box came up with hundreds of options, and no matter which one I chose I couldn't proceed, for unknown reasons (possibly just me not understanding how it works?)

Incidentally, I did have Nepomuk Semantic Desktop or whatever it's called turned off, but turned it on before trying again just in case it would make a difference.

The main issue I seem to be having here is not being able to find any documentation. The link I pasted further up bears no relation to anything I can find in my system settings, so I can't follow any of the instructions. I'm kind of at my wit's end and it seems pointless to just keep trying things (and risk breaking something). Help?

[SteveRiley]

What service are you using for email? It would be best to integrate the address book with your email service, if such integration is possible. GMail would be one example of where you can do this.

[dbaker]

I don't use webmail, if that's what you mean. It's entirely through my ISP. Is that terribly old-fashioned these days? :P

[SteveRiley]

No, that's not at all old-fashioned. You are likely using IMAP4 to retrieve email from your ISP, right? Do you have an address book maintained within your ISP's mail system? If so, does offer WebDAV or CardDAV access?

[dbaker]

I'm using POP3 to retrieve mail. I'm not aware of any address book, I'd be a bit alarmed if there was one, actually. I'd like a local address book, but I don't know if that's possible.
(I've come from OS X....)

[SteveRiley]

I would encourage you to switch from POP3 to IMAP4 (often the "4" is omitted). POP3 almost always moves your email off your ISP's servers; if you ever accidentally delete the email from your computer, it'll be gone forever. IMAP4 preserves the mail on your ISP's servers, allows you to construct a folder structure, create server-side rules for mail sorting, and then mirrors all this locally. You can kill your local mail store and regenerate it whenever you wish.

To create a local address book:

1. Choose File -> New -> Add Address Book
2. Scroll down through the list of address book types and choose Personal Contacts
3. The directory name should be automatically filled in with /home/USER/.local/share/contacts/ where USER is your username; just click OK

Now start creating addresses.

[dbaker]

phew! awesome, thankyou
that's interesting about IMAP - I don't like the idea of my mail hanging around on a server (I want it to be gone forever - call me weird!) and back when I used OS X, I had to configure my mail settings to delete mail off the server as soon as it was downloaded manually. It certainly wasn't automatic.

[SteveRiley]

Then I hope regular, multiple backups are part of your religious routine