The People app is the central place for all your contacts , and it's one of the most important apps you'll use in Windows 8. The People app can also be integrated with your favorite social networks , such as Facebook and Twitter. In this lesson, you'll learn how to add, manage, and organize your contacts, as well as how to connect your social networks.
Click the buttons in the interactive below to become more familiar with the People app interface.
Click here to see the latest updates from your connected social networks.
Click here to view notifications from your connected social networks.
Click here to see a summary of your social news feeds , post a status update , change your profile picture , and more.
You can save your favorite and most frequently used contacts for quick access.
Small icons for each connected social network appear in the upper-right corner.
All of your contacts will be visible to the right. Simply click to view more information about a specific contact.
Rather than keeping a separate list of contacts for different apps—for example, email contacts and messaging contacts —the People app keeps all of your contacts together. Once you've added contacts to the People app, you'll use the same contact information to send emails, chat, and share files and photos .
There are two ways to add contacts:
Connecting to another account will import all of your existing contacts . If you choose to connect to a social network, your news feeds and updates will also be integrated into the People app.
Unlike manually added contacts, any contacts imported from another service cannot be deleted . We've noticed that connecting to some services (especially Twitter) may import contacts that you don't actually need to communicate with. Be sure to consider how often you'll use all of your contacts before deciding to import from any given external service.
If you don't have all of your contacts stored on your social networks, or if you just prefer to enter contact information on your own, it's easy to add contacts manually .
Once you've added some contacts, you're ready to start using the People app. It's easy to connect with any of your contacts by navigating to their contact page . From there, you'll be able to see each contact's information , as well as updates and photos from any connected social networks. You can also edit a contact if you need to change or update information.
Sometimes the Back Arrow may not appear on a contact page. If this occurs, right-click the mouse, and then select the Home button from the menu at the bottom of the screen.
If you have a lot of different contacts, it can be difficult to locate the one you need. Fortunately, there are several ways to find your contacts quickly .
If you want to jump directly to a specific place in your contacts list—for example, contacts whose names begin with the letter G—you can zoom out to see a simplified view of your contacts.
If you import contacts from multiple services, you may find that you have duplicate contacts . For example, you might have imported the same contact from both Gmail and Facebook. You can link these together to create a single contact.
Once you have added an account, like Facebook or Twitter, you may want to modify how much information the People app can access. You can also choose to remove a linked account completely.
Removing a linked account will also remove all contacts imported from that service.
If you have certain contacts you use frequently, you may wish to favorite or pin those contacts for quick access.
Just like apps, you can also pin a contact to the Start screen .
To unpin a contact from the Start screen, right-click on the contact page, and then select Unpin from Start from the menu.
The social page makes it easy to see a quick summary of the latest information from your connected social networks. From here, you can edit your profile picture , post status updates , view your notifications , like and comment on posts, and more.
It's easy to change your profile picture from the social page, but it's important to note that this will only change your Microsoft account profile picture, not connected accounts like Gmail or LinkedIn.