Wicked Cool Emacs: BBDB: Work with Records
| bbdb, emacs, wickedcoolemacsCreating Records
Creating a record in BBDB is not like creating a record in graphical address book programs. You will be prompted for each field through the minibuffer, one field at a time. Don’t worry about making mistakes while entering data, as you can always edit the records afterwards.
To create a record, use the command M-x bbdb-create. Here are the prompts you’ll encounter:
| Prompt | Notes | Example |
| Name | Full name | John Doe |
| Company | Company or organization | ACME |
| Network Address | E-mail address (comma-separated list) | john@example.com |
| Address Description | Short identifier for address (Home, Office, etc.) – tab completion available. Leave blank if you have no address information, or if you are done. | Home |
| Street, line 1 | Street address, line 1 (not including city, state, postal code or country) | 1 Acme Road |
| Street, line … | Street address, more lines – press RET to indicate the end of the street address | |
| City | Acme City | |
| State | Abbreviations are okay. Consistency helps. | AC |
| Country | Acme Country | |
| Phone Location | Short identifier for phone number (Home, Office, etc.) – tab completion available. Leave blank if you have no phone information, or if you are done. | Home |
| Phone | Phone number. I tend to specify the full number, using spaces to break it into readable chunks. | +1 111 111 1111 x1111 |
| Additional Comments | Notes about the person, such as interests, how you met, and so on | Likes rockets |
Press RET to skip any fields for which you don’t have information. To
cancel the entry process, type C-g (keyboard-quit).
After you create the record, Emacs will display the record in another
window. You can then switch to the record and edit it. See Project XXX: Edit a BBDB record.
Searching Records
To search for a specific record, type M-x bbdb, or press b
(bbdb) while in the BBDB buffer. This prompts for a regular
expression and searches the name, company, network address, and notes
fields of all the records for a match against the regular expression
supplied. M-x bbdb-name, M-x bbdb-company, M-x bbdb-net, M-x
bbdb-notes, and M-x bbdb-phones search the corresponding fields only.
Updating Records
After creating or searching for a record, you can switch to the BBDB
window to edit it. Press C-o (bbdb-insert-field) to insert
custom fields. You can use tab completion on existing field names, and
you can also define your own fields by typing any field name. For
example, you may want to store people’s job titles in a field called
“job”.
To edit the value of a field, move your cursor to the field and press
e (bbdb-edit-current-field) to change the value. To delete
a field, move your cursor to the field and press C-k
(bbdb-delete-current-field-or-record).
Deleting Records
To delete an entire record, move the text cursor to the name and press C-k (bbdb-delete-current-field-or-record). You will be prompted for confirmation. Be careful! If you mistakenly delete a record, there’s no easy way to get it back. Fortunately, BBDB stores its data in a plain text file (~/.bbdb). Back up that file regularly and you’ll be able to recover from mistakes. You can also set up automatic file backups in Emacs (see Project XXX: Make Automatic Backups).
Now you know how to work with individual records. How can you import your address book information from other programs?