Adding Person to Multiple Lists

It is possible, and very likely, that you will create more than one list, and that the same person/couple/family will appear on more than one list.

After adding names to your first list, you add names to the next list as follows:

  • Import all of names from the first list
  • Add names from Contacts as before i.e. adding a name from Contacts which was already added to the first list
  • Add names choosing the option Select Existing Name(s) i.e. adding names that were previous manually typed for the first list.

As you are adding the same person(s) to various lists, the app normally works as follows. It stores the information for the person in one place in the database. The various lists get the information they need from this one place in the data base. This is more efficient than storing multiple copies of the person’s details. It also means that changes made to the person’s details in one list will apply to all lists – more about that soon.

It also has the benefit that you can look at the history for that person and see what lists they appear in. This can be useful for say Christmas lists, where you can see that person in all of the Christmas lists and check if they sent a card to you each year.

However, in some cases it might not be desirable to have the details for the person change in all of the lists. Here is an example. Suppose you have a contact in your Contacts called John Smith, and you have added him to a Christmas list and a Golf Club list. You want the Christmas card to the addressed to John and his wife – “John and Mary Smith”, but changing the name from “John Smith” to “John and Mary Smith” on the Christmas list would mean also having that change on the Golf list – which you don’t want.

To get around this, there is a special setting for the lists. If you tap on the Settings (cog) button, and scroll down to the end of the settings, you will see the Create New Person setting.

If you tap this switch to switch it on, then from then onwards, the app will behave differently. After that, whenever you add a person to a list, that person will be added as a “new” person in the database. This means that you can change the name for that person in a list, without that change appearing for that person in another list. This will only apply to names added after switching this on, and not to names already added previously. So if you already have a person on several lists, and you want to change the name in one or more of the lists, you would have to switch this setting on, delete the person from a list, add it back to the list, and then change the name.