Filed under: Software, Switchers, How-tos
Move an address book from Outlook to OSX
One question I see asked all over the place by switchers is how to move an address book from Outlook on Windows to Address Book in OSX. I've seen utilities and scripts out there that claim to do it, but I've never had or heard of much luck with them. If you're in the same boat, a post over at macosxhints.com lays out a down and dirty method using Mozilla's address book and Excel to shuffle all your contacts from Outlook into an LDIF format that OSX's Address Book can import.Sounds nasty I know, but if you've been having issues like this and have all but given up - this could be your contacts' last hope. If anyone gives this a whirl, (I switched years ago) please feel free to post your experience.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jeff Kirk said 11:04AM on 9-03-2005
I converted my entire office of 20 employees from Windows to MacOS X. In the process, I used "Outlook2Mac" by LittleMachines.com. It worked flawlessly. This converted all the addresses and even the e-mails with the attachments.
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Ben said 11:43AM on 9-03-2005
If you are going to use Entourage (because you will eventually need excel, and you are just going to get the whole office suite anyway), then they will import your contacts without issue:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/officex/using.aspx?pid=usingofficex&type=howto&article=/mac/LIBRARY/feature_articles/officex/en_import_contacts.xml
buying a 12" ibook this weekend... wanted to be sure that I could use all my data from my old notebook....
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Wheels said 12:14PM on 9-03-2005
All you have to do is to export your Outlook address to a tab delineated text file, as opposed to comma delineated,download an app called Address Book Importer - think it's freeware - follow the directions in the readme file and, even with some miscues, you'll be good to go in five minutes.
http://homepage.mac.com/sroy/addressbookimporter/index.html
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Donald Noble said 1:19PM on 9-03-2005
It is possible to use VBA in outlook (windows) to export all your contacts to vCard format and drop them into address book.
I modified a script to sync outlook to an iPod, details here:
http://drnoble.co.uk/archives/2005-06-19/migrating-contacts-from-outlook-xp-to-the-os-x-address-book/
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Peter Koritschan said 1:28PM on 9-03-2005
I struggled for a long time as well when I switched earlier this year, until I found a great $10 utility called outlook2mac (http://www.littlemachines.com/).
It did not only easily transfer my contacts, but my mail data as well, which as well all know is a much more difficult task otherwise....
With this tool it only took me a few clicks and a few minutes, and I had all my info in mail.app....
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Jason Coleman said 1:30PM on 9-03-2005
When my wife "switched," I think we used the deliminated file for her address book. However, I remember e-mails being the real pain. We installed Thunderbird on her windows laptop, imported everything, and then used the standard e-mail files to bring into mail.
It was almost painless. However, after the fact, I agree that using a relatively cheap program such as Outlook2Mac. Spend $10 and make your life easier.
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iFelix said 3:43AM on 9-05-2005
I use my phone, sync with the PC and then sync with the Mac.
Quick and easy.
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Chris Liscio said 4:23PM on 9-03-2005
Have you tried my ABFiller utility that I wrote a while ago and released for free? I haven't kept it too up-to-date since I got readpst working at the command-line. That said, people still email me saying how great it worked for them.
More details here:
http://www.supermegaultragroovy.com/ABFiller
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David Chartier said 3:15PM on 11-02-2005
iFelix that's pure genius! While I know not all phones can hold ALL of a contact's info, like addresses, birthdays, etc, that is a great method I've never thought of.
Good show!
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jbelkin said 1:00AM on 9-04-2005
depending on how many contacts, you can also drag a lot of info into ADDRESS BOOK ...
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Joshua said 2:24PM on 9-04-2005
A pretty simple solution for me was to sync Outlook to Plaxo (http://www.plaxo.com) and then export from Plaxo for the Mac. Worked perfectly for me and would probably also work for calendar data too.
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Raghu said 10:57AM on 9-06-2005
I did basically the same thing, but instead of using the Mozilla suite, I used the address book that comes with Thunderbird. Finally I got rid of the Outlook nuisance and use Thunderbird on my PC and Mail on my Mac.
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