Apple's Address Book utility is a handy place to store information for your contacts, especially since it integrates so well with other Mac OS X programs. However, for many people, relatively few Address-Book interactions involve editing contact data. You're usually just trying to view or copy someone's information; for example, an address or phone number. In these cases, launching Address Book is overkill.

In the past, I've recommended BuddyPop, a €10 (US$15) utility that acts much like Spotlight or LaunchBar for accessing Address Book contacts. (And LaunchBar itself offers such functionality.) But for those on a tighter budget, consider Yellow Mug Software's TapDex 3.3.2 (basic version, free; Pro version, US$5).

As with BuddyPop, whenever you want to quickly grab some contact information, you just press a keyboard shortcut (that you define in TapDex's preferences) and then type a few letters of the person or business's name. As you're typing, TapDex displays the number of contacts that match what you've typed; the more specific you are, the fewer matches appear.

Improvements TapDex provides over BuddyPop are that you don't have to type names in order, and you can mix individual and company names. For example, if "Smith" gives you too many results, typing a space and then "Jo" will result in only those contacts with both Smith and Jo anywhere in their names (as illustrated in the screenshot below). Similarly, typing "Apple Jim" will result in anyone named Jim who works at Apple (or anyone named Apple who works at Jim's Autobody, or anyone named Jimmy Appleseed, or any company called Jiminy Applesauce...you get the picture).

If you've typed enough information to match only a single contact, TapDex displays that contact's information in its window. If you've instead typed just enough to narrow down the results to a manageable number, press return; TapDex's window will include a list of matching contacts. You can then use the Up and Down arrow keys, or the mouse, to select the desired contact.

Any information you've entered in Address Book for the chosen contact appears here.) One limitation is that the Notes field displays only the first line of the note; to view the entire note, you'll have to open the actual contact in Address Book, which you can do by clicking on the contact name at the top of the TapDex window.)

For more Mac news, visit Macworld. Story copyright Mac Publishing, LLC.

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