Problems with displaying contacts

I really like the fact that DOpus allows the contact details to be displayed in the Viewer. This is far more convenient that the unsystematic columns of Windows Explorer.

I have, however, two serious problems with "Contacts" in DOpus, and one query.

  1. Many of the fields are missing when DOpus displays a windows .contact file in the Viewer. This is a real nuisance when looking someone up, because you keep wondering whether some of the data is hidden from the Viewer and you should be clicking on the file and clicking through the tabs. Specifically, the missing fields are:
  • [Tab: Name] Personal Title (This could lead to a serious error.)
  • [Tab: Work] Company
  • [Tab: Work] Job Title
  • [Tab: Work] Department
  • [Tab: Work] Office
  • [Tab: Family] Gender
  • [Tab: Family] Birthday
  • [Tab: Family] Anniversary
  • [Tab: Family] Spouse
  • [Tab: Family] Children
  • The items in the ID's tab

It would also be most useful to have a "Category" field to sort on, as in Thunderbird's add-on, although I know that this is non-standard and so could be problematic.

Again, it would be useful for sorting purposes to be able to add selected fields from the contact as columns of the lister - as in Windows - but this is a minor point compared to having all the fields displayed in the viewer.

  1. (a) DOpus does not seem to have a plugin for displaying vcards - such a plugin would, of course, have to cope with several different standards for vcards.

(b) DOpus does not seem to have any integration with the Thunderbird address book, which would be most useful, since Thunderbird automatically harvests email addresses.

  1. Query: When I am in the contacts folder using a single column lister and press the "View" tab, the item "Contacts" is greyed out. Why is this so, and what should I be doing so that I can select it, and what is supposed to happen when you do select it?

1a. Contacts are displayed using the preview handler which comes with Vista. As far as I know it does not offer any options about what it displays. (You should see the same information when you view .contact files within Explorer's preview panel as for .contact files both programs are using the same viewer.)

Someone could write a custom .contact file viewer plugin for Opus, in theory, but right now the preview handler is all there is.

1b. If you'd like the contacts Category field to be available as a column for display/sorting in the file display, drop GPsoftware a feature request. Can't guarantee that it'll be added but if nobody asks then it definitely won't be.

2a. Maybe the MultiView plugin could view them. I'm not sure though.

2b. No, Opus doesn't know anything about Thunderbird, unless Thunderbird implements the standard MAPI API to allow other programs to talk to it (which I don't think it does, but it's been a few years since I used Thunderbird).

  1. That "Contacts" item displays a panel showing your Windows Live Messenger contacts. It's not related to email contacts. If it's disabled then it probably means you don't have Messenger installed/running.

PS: Please ask one question per thread if the questions aren't closely related.