Currently, I am using Thunderbird as my e-mail client, and the integrated address book for keeping track of my contacts' addresses. However, while this is fine to have for putting e-mail addresses into e-mails I am writing, I am dissatisfied with this solution as a general address manager for several reasons:
- It is e-mail centered. It feels "wrong" to add contacts to my Thunderbird address book who only have a physical address, but no e-mail address.
- Contacts can have only one physical address. Many of my contacts sometimes change their address, and I find out only later which one is the preferred one, meaning that I have to store all of them in the meantime. Furthermore, some contacts have different addresses for receiving letters, for receiving parcels, and/or for receiving visitors (the latter usually being where they live), all of which need to be distinguished.
- There are no handy exporting features to custom formats.
- Even on the e-mail side, it is slightly lacking, given that I can store only up to two e-mail addresses per contact (which is often way too little).
Therefore, I am looking for an open source address book software that runs on Windows (preferably also on other platforms). It must not be cloud-based (in the sense that it stores address my data on some remote server run by the software producer or similar; web-based or client/server software that can be installed on a locally running server is ok); it must run and keep all data locally on my PC.
For each contact, the address book should allow storing any number of the following data items:
- names
- physical mail addresses
- e-mail addresses
- phone numbers
- any other contact identifiers (IM networks etc.)
The program should also have the following features:
- I need to be able to add annotations for each of the above contact data. At least, a simple textual comment where I can note down things like "address from received envelope from 2016-03-12; find out whether this is new home address".
- The application should offer to export single addresses or sets of addresses into (more or less) custom formats - for instance, exporting to CSV is fine, but I should be able to indicate both formatting options such as delimiters, as well as the actual file contents by specifying a custom ordering, selection, and combination of columns1.
- Ideally, such an export formatting can simply be indicated as an editable textual template with placeholders.
- Bonus points if this can optionally be done while distinguishing between countries (as conventions for address formatting differ between countries; e.g. the ordering of street name and building number).
- It should support Unicode.
Direct synchronization (other than by file transfer) with anything external is a plus, but not required.
1: Exemplary use case: German mail offers online stamps ready to be printed on envelopes along with addresses. The addresses can be entered manually or supplied via a CSV file, but in the latter case, the columns have to match exactly what the stamp printing service expects, hence this should come directly from the address book application.