Main

Navigation
Contact Details
Categories
Actions
Email
Phone and Skype
Files/Photos
Map Services
Relationship
Searches
Print
Import
Export
Predefined Fields
Predefined Sections
Options
Backup
Synchronization
Multiple databases
Network
Mail Merge
Security
Misc
Hidden Powers
Support
Support OC

Open Contacts

 

Multiple databases for only you or multiple users

The data of your address book consists of the following components contained in a working directory:

Core data -- A database file with extension name "FDB" contain essential part of your address book, including contact names, sections, fields, relationships and categories as well as almost all settings. The FDB files may be located outside the working directory if Main.INI is configured respectively.

External files -- While the data fields can store names of external resources like web page addresses and file names, the files pointed by the file names are general stored in local computers or local area network. By default, file names without file path point to files stored in the Files directory of the working directory.

Template files -- While the whole design of Open Contact is very flexible for all users, some users with advanced knowledge of XML/XSL/HTML can modify some template files used by Open Contacts. Please read XML Explained for more details.

The built-in backup function backups the core database only. If you want to backup all components of your address book, you may just simply close the program, and copy all files of the working directory to an external storage.

Sometimes you might want an address book database for all your close contacts, and the other for business customers only. Or, there might be a few users sharing the same PC, each of them may want a personal database located in each personal directory under the "Documents and Settings" directory.

To support multiple databases, technically there can be a lot solutions. Because Open Contacts supports green mode which does not write things into Windows registry, we decided to use the Start-in directory as the location of the data files. The start-in directory is also called working directory. With such mechanism, Open Contacts can be used in the following scenarios:

  • Multiple users (different user accounts) share the same address book in a shareable working directory
  • Multiple users share the same address book in Local Area Network
  • The same user have multiple address books through different shortcuts with different working directory

Please refer to the installation manual for more details.