Need more fields

Plaxo is great, but frankly it needs a way to add in more fields. I have friends on each IM system (IM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ) and would like all of my IM addresses on my card. I also have for work voicemail set up in several countries. My skype name is personal and not for business.

The arbitrary way the fields set up really limits you. Is there any way to add custom fields to each profile?

I would have to agree. I had to put my ICQ number in a phone position. It'd be nice to be able to pic and choose the "extras" that you'd like. Either that or have them there and if you don't fill them out, they don't show up as most of the listing is set up now.

Currently, there is no way to add your own fields.

What we would recommend is you simply use the single field to include multiple pieces of information. For example, your IM field might look like:

IM Field: Y!:privacyYahoo, AIM:privacyAOL, gTalk:privacyGoog

Maintaining a single field helps to ensure supportability with various email clients/address books that Plaxo may integrate with. Many of these applications are unlikely to have multiple fields, and it would be difficult to determine what information should be integrated and what information should not. For example, Outlook only provides a single IM field.

Frankly the multiple/single field issue of differing PIMs just requires proper mapping of those entries. For a single field IM, it could create the combined entry and for multiple field ones it would not be a problem... I have like 5 IM handles just because I have a lot of friends on different systems.

Using a Mac -- I would love to see support for the Apple programs -- I have to use Plaxo Online. I have multiple folders to classify my contacts. For example: Family, Clients, Services (i.e., doctors, lawyers, indian chiefs), Photography (for those in photo clubs I belong to), etc. Having all the contacts in one folder became too unwieldy when the numbers increased.

The only way I could split the original folder was to create a new entry in a new topical folder, then copy-and-paste the data. Lastly I then deleted the original entry from the original folder.

It would be much easier in an edit mode to change folders by picking from the list in the dropdown list box. But the only time the user has access to the dropdown is in the initial entry. Or am I missing something?

I'm in the 30-day Premium trial period, and will be signing up. Is the capability in the Premium service?

Thanks in advance.

Unfortunately, Plaxo Online does not support a "move" operation. I know I've spoken with engienering about this in the past, and because of sync issues, it's actually a difficult problem to resolve.

The easiest way to accomplish this "move" operation is to do it from one of your email clients that is integrated with Plaxo Online (such as Outlook). I realize that you are a Mac user, so this really isn't an alternative for you at the moment, but that's been the general recommendation.

But for people exclusively using Plaxo Online, the only way to "move" an entry from one folder is to basically do what you did. If you have a number of entries to move, you might want to actually export the entries and then import them back into a different folder. They delete them from the original folder.

Thank you for the feedback. Sorry for the delay in replying.

That's a tough answer for me. The Mac Address Book groups, I see now, in beta 1 wound up in the categories field and all entries were into one folder causing me to have a huge number of duplicates on the Plaxo side of the house. The automatic syncing, which I didn't realize until later, was deleting records in the Mac side as the entries changed folders. Luckily I am routinely backing up the Mac Address Book and keep multiple iterations on hand.

It took me a week of long evenings to undo the duplication as records had to be deleted one at a time. Perhaps exporting, deleting the folder, exiting Plaxo, reenter Plaxo and create a new folder to import into might have been the thing to do, but I didn't think to try this approach.

I'm debating what to do with beta 2. I am thinking about blowing out the Plaxo contact folders and just have one Plaxo folder for the Mac, using a search on category to select subsets of Plaxo records. I'm a bit reluctant to just try the step, in case of a mess, because duplicates are a pain to weed out.

That decision may also impact the BlackBerry Address Book (I use PocketMac),

(And I won't even mention that I have a work PC with WinXP that contains a completely different set of addresses.)

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Actually, what I would like to do (as a premium member) is keep the "master" contacts file on Plaxo and just carry a much smaller subset of entries in the Mac and Blackberry address books. That concept was suggested by Palm many years ago: the Mac would have the full contact file and contacts to be synced were dragged into a "Palm" group. The Palm sync would be restricted to the Palm group folder.

In the Mac Address book, it is just a drag-drop to assign an entry to a group... and the entry can appear in multiple groups.

Any comments or alternative suggestions, ideas, would be appreciated. Thanks!