Multiple Address Books
Separate address books for work, family, clubs — each with its own groups, each syncing to all your devices.
Overview
Alongside your main Personal Addresses book, you can create additional address books — one for work contacts, one for a club, one for family. Each additional book appears in the Contacts sidebar in webmail, participates in address autocompletion when you compose, and can hold its own contact groups.
Every address book is a real CardDAV collection on our server. Add the same sync login you already use for your calendar, and each book shows up as a separate address book on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Android device (with DAVx⁵) — create a contact on your phone and it appears in webmail, and the other way around. Groups sync too, in the same format Apple’s Contacts app uses.
The number of additional address books depends on your plan.
Creating and Managing Address Books
In Contacts, open the Actions menu (the three-dot button above the directory list):
- Create address book — type a name and save. The new book appears in the sidebar immediately and on your synced devices at their next refresh.
- Rename address book — select the book first, then choose Rename. The new name flows out to your devices.
- Delete address book — select the book, choose Delete, and confirm. This removes the book and every contact in it, everywhere it syncs. Your main Personal Addresses book cannot be deleted.
Move or copy contacts between books with the standard More → Copy to / Move to actions on any selected contact.
Groups That Actually Sync
Each additional address book supports contact groups: create a group with the + button under the sidebar, drag contacts into it, and type the group’s name when composing to address everyone in it at once.
Groups in additional address books are stored in the same open format Apple’s Contacts app uses, so a group you make in webmail appears on your iPhone or Mac, and a group you make on your device appears in webmail — members and all.
Syncing to Your Devices
Additional address books sync through the same DAV logins you may already use for calendars and contacts. In Settings → DAV Sync, each login lists your address books with per-book read, write, and delete permissions — so you can give a work laptop access to only the work book, or make a book read-only on a shared device.
Newly created books are private to the login that created them until you grant other logins access, and a login without read access does not see the book at all.
Setup on each platform is identical to regular contact sync — see the calendar and contact sync guide. Once the account is added, your devices discover all the address books that login can read, automatically.