path: root/help/C/link-contacts.page

<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/"
  type="topic"
  style="task"
  id="link-contacts">
      
  <info>
    <link type="guide" xref="index#contacts" />
    <link type="seealso" xref="send-message" />
    <link type="seealso" xref="audio-call" />
    <link type="seealso" xref="video-call" />
    <desc>Merge and separate different contacts into a single one.</desc>
    <revision pkgversion="2.32" version="0.1" date="2010-09-06" status="draft"/>
    <revision pkgversion="2.32" version="0.2" date="2010-09-09" status="review"/>
    <credit type="author">
      <name>Milo Casagrande</name>
      <email>milo@ubuntu.com</email>
    </credit>
    <credit type="editor">
      <name>Shobha Tyagi</name>
      <email>tyagishobha@gmail.com</email>
    </credit>
    <license>
      <p>
        Creative Commons Share Alike 3.0
      </p>
    </license>
  </info>

  <title>Link and unlink contacts</title>
  <p>
    If one or more of your contacts has multiple accounts with different
    messaging services, you can combine these accounts into a single contact.
  </p>
  <p>
    The resulting contact is called a <em>meta-contact</em>: a contact composed
    from different single contacts.
  </p>
  <p>
    Suppose you have a contact called Jane Smith who is using three different
    messaging services like:
  </p>
  <list>
    <item>
      <p>
        janes@facebook
      </p>
    </item>
    <item>
      <p>
        jane.smith@gmail
      </p>
    </item>
    <item>
      <p>
        jane_smith@hotmail
      </p>
    </item>
  </list>
  <p>
    You can combine these contacts into a single Jane Smith one.
  </p>
  <section id="linking">
  <title>Link contacts</title>
  <p>
    The way you can link your contacts is as follows:
  </p>
    <steps>
      <item>
        <p>
          Press the tick button to select entries you want to link. This will enable
          <em>selection mode</em> and you can see a checkbox for each entry.
        </p>
      </item>
      <item>
        <p>
      Tick the checkboxes that correspond to the <app>Contacts</app> entries which
      belong to the same contact.
        </p>
      </item>
      <item>
        <p>
          Press <gui style="button">Link</gui>.
        </p>
      </item>
    </steps>
    <p>
      Repeat steps 3 and 4 in order to link other contacts.
    </p>
  </section>
  
  <section id="unlinking">
  <title>Unlink contacts</title>
  <p>
    To unlink a linked contact:
  </p>
    <steps>
      <item>
        <p>
          Select the contact from your list.
        </p>
      </item>
      <item>
        <p>
          Press <gui style="button">Edit</gui> in the top-right corner of <app>Contacts</app>.
    </p>
      </item>
      <item>
    <p>
      Press <gui style="button">Linked Contacts</gui>.
        </p>
      </item>
      <item>
    <p>
      Press <gui style="button">Remove</gui> to unlink an entry from the linked contact.
        </p>
      </item>
      <item>
        <p>
          Press <gui style="button">Close</gui> if you do not want to unlink any more contacts.
        </p>
      </item>
      <item>
        <p>
      Finally, press <gui style="button">Done</gui> to finish editing.
    </p>
      </item>
    </steps>
  </section>
</page>