My ABs™

My ABs allows you to replicate Address Book (e.g. Global Address List) entries and properties to Outlook Contact folders and search the Address Book from any email enabled device. Ideally suited for those with Windows CE based PDAs, Palm Pilots, BlackBerry devices, Cell Phones and any other device that can synchronize contact information with Microsoft Outlook. To support searching the device must be email enabled.  If you are on Exchange Server with a well maintained Global Address List, then this is the tool for you. Face it..."Everyone Loves Repl-ing ABs".

Note: Program available for all versions of Microsoft Outlook but for complete features you must have Outlook 2000. Hopefully the feature set will be the same when the software is finally released.

DETAILS

• Add Address Book entries to Contacts Folders
• Update previously replicated Address Book entries in Contacts Folders based on last update time
• Will not overwrite contact fields if source field in Address Book is blank (configurable)
• Will replicate default Contact folder but can also replicate any currently selected contact-type folder (Outlook 2000 only)
• Search Address Book from any email enabled device with configurable search requester. With application running, an email message sent to default mailbox will initiate a search of the address book and a response to sender with details. Include "abfind" in the subject and search name in the body, any resolvable search term is acceptable, including first and last name, alias, email address, etc. If it can be resolved in the TO: field of a message, then MyABs should be able to resolve it. If ambiguous (more than one match), then it will return up to 5 matching addresses.

For Example:

From: Your Portable Device To: Your MailBox   Subject: abfind Message Body: John Doe

Example Response: (actual response may vary depending on detail within address book)

From: Your MailBox To: Your Portable Device Subject: MyABs Search Results   Message Body: John Doe Name:John Name:Doe Fax #:555-555-5555 Work #:555-555-5556 Email:john.doe@markchavez.com Company:MarkChavez.com Nickname:jdoe City:AnyTown Zip/Postal Code:55555 Country:US Address1:123 AnyStreet State/Prov:CA Title:Big Cheese

Screenshots

Screen Shot 1 - Main Screen

Configuration 

My ABs uses the first email address in the Contact as the link to the Address Book entry. The "Billing Information" field of the Contact to store the last modified date of the Address Book entry preventing unnecessary updates. To force an update, clear the "Billing Information" field. To prevent updating, set the billing information date to sometime in the distant future.  If you use this field for any real data, do not use this program. 

 

REQUIREMENTS

Microsoft Windows 95, 98, NT 4.x, Windows 2000

Microsoft Exchange Server mailbox running version 4.x, 5.0, or 5.5 (all service packs)

Microsoft Outlook 2000 with CDO installed * (CDO is not installed with Office/Outlook by default. Just add it from the Office Setup Wizard under Outlook.)

Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime Libraries ( Click here to get them from Microsoft) 1 MByte

 

*  Version available to support Outlook (8.03 and above), Outlook 98 with Active Messaging. This version works with all versions of Outlook but with less functionality. 

DOWNLOAD

To make the download size small, the Visual Basic runtime libraries are not included. If you do not have the runtime libraries and the program does not work, you should be able to download them from Microsoft or send me an email and I will find them. The file is the actual program and no setup is required. Just download to your favorite folder, desktop or anywhere else.

My ABs 1.0.0 for Outlook 2000 [MyABs.exe] 116 KBytes

My Abs 97 1.0.0 for Outlook 97 and 98 [MyABs97.exe] 112 KBytes

COST and SUPPORT

My ABs is in its first non-beta release. It is Freeware but not Public Domain. Please feel free to contact the author and copyright owner at myabs@markchavez.com for additional information.

RELEASE HISTORY

Version	Comments	2000	97/98	Date
0.9.3	Initial Release (BETA)			2000/10/03
0.9.4	Corrected problem in 97 version that set the "File As" field to Company. Now uses the first email address in the Contact to link to the Address Book. Uses "Billing Information" field to store last modified date of entry in Address Book. This will prevent constant updating of contact items when data has not changed resulting in faster PDA synchronization for large contact folders. If you used the previous version that stored the email link in the "billing information" field, it will be updated to the new format when you run the update again.			2000/10/04
0.9.5	Corrected problem where some contact items were skipped Added Force Update option to force updating of contact information regardless of last update time in Address Book Added "MyABs" to category list to help identify what contacts have been touched by the MyABs program. Added activity logging. Use View / Activity Log... menu option to view log. Log resets when program is started.			2000/10/14
0.9.6	Corrected problem where default folder was not selected and messages of current folder were processed incorrectly Added MyABs Category Only option to only process items previously processed by MyABs.			2000/10/20
0.9.8	Added function to allow submitting search messages for items synced to your portable device; configurable search requester. Created options dialog for configuration and store parameters in Registry for repeated use. Extended Expiration to 03/31/2001			2000/12/30
0.9.8	Same as the version for Outlook 2000 with following exceptions No support for Contact folder other than the Contact folder in the default mailbox. Removed some non-functional menu options.			2000/12/31
1.0.0	First non-beta release. Expirations removed.  Added option to not overwrite outlook fields with blank values when source field in Address Book is blank.  Fixed problem with searching for nonexistant address resulted in a hang.			2001/03/31