Interact Scratchpad Basics

 

Scratchpad Basics

The Interact Scratchpad for Mac is a menubar utility which allows easy creation (or modification) of contacts records in your default macOS contact accounts from plain, natural language text.  To use the Scratchpad:

• Click the Scratchpad icon in your menu bar (or hit the configurable global hot key) to open the Scratchpad window.
• Type or paste some text with contact information into the Scratchpad.  The Scratchpad will search the text for recognizable contact information, such as names, phones numbers, addresses.  Any values it has recognized will be shown in bold.
• If needed, mark additional text with tags. If you wish to add additional values, or mark values the Scratchpad could not automatically identify, you can use tags. Tags can be manually typed at the beginning of a line, followed by a ":" and the value for the tag - or inserted by making a text selection and choosing the tag from the tag selection dropdown menu. Read more about available tags and their use.
• Once your text is ready, you have several options:
  • Create: Adds a new contact to your default macOS contacts account using the text provided.
  • Add to...: Allow selection of an existing contact to merge new data.  This is great for completing unfinished contact records, add additional phone numbers, etc.
  • Preview: Shows a preview of the contact card as it will be created.
  • Share: Allows export of a vCard version of the parsed contact information.  Sharing can be done without creating a contact record and is a great tool for creating shareable vCards will limited information.

 

About Contact Accounts

The Interact Scratchpad uses Contacts accounts configured in macOS System Preferences.  The same accounts used by the built-in Contact app.  New contacts created by Interact will reside in the default Contacts account for the system.  The default account can be selected in the built-in macOS Contacts app.

Interact can use the "Add to..." feature to merge values into existing contacts in any Contacts account.