E-Z Contact Book

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on July 11, 2011

Contact managers don't have to be complex to be useful, and E-Z Contact Book takes that fact and runs with it. This simple program makes it easy to keep track of friends, family, business associates, and anyone else, and it includes a few extra features that set it above the no-frills competition.

E-Z Contact Book's interface is plain and intuitive, and we had no trouble getting started with it. To add contacts, you must first create a new group within the All Contacts heading. This makes it easy to keep contacts from different parts of your life organized and easy to find. For each contact, you can then add both personal and business contact information, a birthday, and notes. The program has a search feature, an important component of any contact manager that you're going to use for more than a few people, but what really impressed us were some of the other features that you don't always see in programs of this type. You can click on a contact's e-mail address to launch a default e-mail program and click on Web addresses to go to the Web site--fairly typical features--but you can also click on a phone number to initiate a call using Skype. You have to have Skype installed for this to work, of course, and the typical fees apply, but those who are already fans of Skype will appreciate this feature. We also loved it that the program will automatically launch Google Maps and show the location of a contact's address. An online Help file is well-written and thorough. Overall, we were quite impressed with E-Z Contact Book; we loved that it doesn't go overboard with features of questionable value but instead includes just a few, really useful extras in an easy-to-navigate interface.

Publisher's Description

From Dmitri Karshakevich:

E-Z Contact Book is a free easy to use yet powerful Windows program to store and manage contact information. You can use it as a business directory, customer database, or a personal contact address/phone/email book. Phone numbers, emails, web pages, faxes, business and home addresses, customer notes - you can maintain all this data in an organized format. You can start sending emails, open web pages and making calls using Skype in one click. The program has a simple intuitive interface with quick and powerful "wildcard" search feature.

Program features: Import and export data to/from comma-separated (CSV) text files, MS Outlook, Google CSV files, eCard files, and its own database backup files; Printing of a single card or the entire Contact Book; Birthday reminders; Printing of mail envelopes; Finding contact location in Google Maps; Integration with GMail Contacts.

What's new in this version: Version 3.0:

Changed database type to SQLite for compliance with Unicode
Implemented automatic import from old FDB database, made import compliant with both (old and new) database types
Improved grid columns persistence (eliminated uncontrolled auto-adjustment of column width)
Extended State/Province to 30 characters to accommodate UK counties
Added "View" menu option, with Hide/Show options for Groups and Details sections
Enabled context menu... See all new features