How to create a second address book in Evolution and isolate the contacts from the Primary Address Book

I manage a office address book of about 300 members. I use Evolution on Linux as the primary email client. The problem was that I did not want to combine the names and addresses of the members of the club with those in my Personal Address Book. One solution is to use Groups, but still all contacts will appear in one single contact list.

To overcome this problem, the best solution is to create a secondary address book called OfficeBook. The default address book in Evolution is called “Personal Address Book” and you can have as many address books as you like. Evolution also has a feature where auto-completion of email address when typing email will not select contacts from the secondary address book. This method ensures that all members are isolated from the personal address book.

Here is how it can be done.

1. Start Evolution
2. Click on File -> New -> Address Book
3. In the New Address Book window, enter the name of your address book in Name:. I entered OfficeBook.
4. If you do not want the auto-complete to select names from this address book, uncheck Autocomplete with this address book.
5. Click on Contacts button to see if OfficeBook was created.
6. Select OfficeBook address book that appears just below Personal
7. Click on File -> Import... and then click Continue
8. Choose Import a single file and click Continue
9. Select the file. In my case, this was OfficeBook.vcf. Click Continue.
10. Choose the destination address book in Evolution. This is OfficeBook.
11. Click Continue and then Apply.

You have now created a second address book in Evolution named it Office Book and the contacts will not come up in the Auto-complete list when creating a mail.