Why carry around business cards, sticky notes, or scraps of paper when you can store your contacts, schedules, to-do lists, and other notes on your iPod?
If you want to have phone numbers, email addresses, meeting times, grocery lists, driving directions, and other bits of information at your fingertips, you can stick the data in any iPod model with a display screen. And every iPod allows you to use it as a “disk drive" to shuttle your projects and music files between your computers. Here are the ways iPod can make your life easier for those times when you need to get your life in order.
- Organize My Contacts and Schedule
- Take a Note
- Viewing my Contacts, Schedule, and Notes on my iPod
- Shuttle My Projects and Music
Organize My Contacts and Schedule
If you've got contacts on your computer, you can easily turn your iPod into a more sophisticated version of your little black book.
If you've got phone numbers, email addresses, and other personal information for those very important people in your life stored on your computer, you can easily take it all with you on your iPod.
If you're using a Mac, you can easily sync contacts in Address Book with your iPod. If you're using Windows, you can easily sync contacts from Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. Alternatively, you can transfer contact information from any Mac or Windows contacts manager that can export (or supports) contacts in vCard (.vcf) file format, such as Palm Desktop, Microsoft Entourage, and Eudora.
Syncing Contacts and Calendars on a Mac
On a Mac, you can use iTunes to sync contacts from Address Book, or your calendars from iCal, directly to your iPod. Check out “Mac OS X 10.4: Use iTunes for iPod syncing” to see how on a Mac.
Syncing Contacts and Calendars on Windows
On Windows, you can use iTunes to sync contacts from your Outlook or Outlook Express address book, or your calendar from Microsoft Outlook, directly to your iPod. Check out “Syncing contacts and calendars to iPod with iTunes for Windows” to see how on Windows.
Adding Contacts Manually (Mac and Windows)
You can easily copy contacts from popular address book applications and programs on either your Mac or Windows PC by simply dragging vCard files directly into the Contacts folder on your iPod.
If you don’t have iCal or one of the Windows Outlook applications, you can still add contacts from other popular address books and calendars manually, by using vCards. Check out “iPod: Importing Contacts and Appointments” to find out how.
Take a Note
To read text files on your iPod, just convert them to plain text files and drag them into the Notes folder on your iPod.
Grocery lists, to-do items, driving directions, a cheat sheet that details your blind date's interests—if you can type (or copy) a note, you can take it with you on your iPod and refer to it as often as needed. Just remember to keep your notes fairly brief—you can cram in up to 4096 characters (4 KB total) per note.
To see how to make your iPod “notable”, check out “Storing and reading notes with your iPod”.
Viewing my Contacts, Schedule, and Notes on my iPod
Viewing Contacts
When you're done copying your contacts, click the eject button next to your iPod icon in the Source list, then disconnect your iPod from your computer. To view your contacts, just choose Extras > Contacts to view a list of your contact names (to change how these are sorted and displayed, see the Contacts section of "What's on the Menu." To view the details, use the Click Wheel to highlight a name and press the Center button.
Viewing Calendars
When you're done copying your calendars, click the eject button next to your iPod icon in the iTunes Source list, then disconnect your iPod from your computer. To view your schedule, just choose Extras > Calendars. To view your entire schedule (all calendars together), select All. To view an individual calendar, choose its name in the list.
Your iPod displays a calendar graphic marked by flags, which indicate an event (or scheduled item). To view an event, use the Click Wheel to scroll to the date, press the Center button to view a list of all events for that date, then choose an item to view its details.
Viewing Notes
When you're done copying over your notes, click the eject button next to your iPod icon in the iTunes Source list, then disconnect your iPod from your computer. To view your notes, just choose Extras > Notes to view a list of all notes on your iPod. To read one, scroll the Click Wheel to highlight its name and press the Center button (use the Click Wheel to scroll down the document too).
Shuttle My Projects and Music
If you haven't already figured it out by now, you can use any iPod model as an external hard drive, allowing you to copy files onto it and shuttle items from one computer to another. This comes in handy if you need to work on projects at the office or school and at home, or you want to transfer your digital music collection from your old computer to a new one. Here's how to enable this feature.
Important: Information about products not manufactured by Apple is provided for information purposes only, and does not constitute Apple's recommendation or endorsement. Please contact the vendor for additional information.