Filed under: Software, Productivity, Internet Tools
Finally - a tool for exporting Address Book to Thunderbird (and Gmail)
Answering the prayers of potential Thunderbird switchers everywhere, a wonderful and as-yet unnamed individual has
put together a web-based vCard-to-CSV Converter for easily moving
your contacts from Address Book into either Thunderbird or Gmail. The interface and process are both conveniently
simple: export your desired group in Address Book (File > Export vCard) and feed it into this tool. You have three conversion options: LDIF (which is
Thunderbird-friendly), CSV and Gmail CSV.After discovering the joys of Gmail (but not removing Mail.app from my Dock just yet) I'm not that interested in Thunderbird, but I fired it up just to verify that this conversion and import process is the first I've seen to truly work without a single hangup. The new LDIF file imports just fine into Thunderbird, and you won't even have to remap any fields.
[via Hawk Wings]
Get a WordPress.com Blog
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dan Waldhoff said 8:23AM on 1-05-2006
Sounds great ... but it brought up a dialog asking me if I wanted to continue after opening opening Excel. Didn't think, in this instance, that I wanted to.
Reply
MP said 9:23AM on 1-05-2006
Wow - worked for me. This is great.
Now, it would be awesome if there was someway for Thunderbird to use Address Book all the time (so addresses would always be in sync).
Reply
djones said 9:30AM on 1-05-2006
Finally? September 1st 2004, and repeated on the 7th at macosxhints.com:
http://www.hailstonesoftware.com/articles/2004/09/01/address-book-to-csv
And, btw, it's an applescript that you run locally. Not some unknown software which transmits your address book data unsecurely across the intramanet.
Reply
Jeff (Switcher since 10/2004) said 10:54AM on 1-05-2006
I would be really, really, really concerned that my addresses would be copied by this web-based tool.
Reply
Tim Bush said 11:31AM on 1-05-2006
I have to agree with a another poster, I have a an apple script that is named address book to CSV dated September 9, 2004. I would be VERY wary of my addresses being beamed all over the web.
Reply
jimmy said 12:40PM on 1-05-2006
I'm with MP; sync between Gmail and AddressBook would be great. But if you're like me, how about doing it across several apps? Gmail, AddressBook, Entourage, etc...
Reply
Chris said 6:12AM on 1-09-2006
Nice idea, but it has problems with non-western characters, no matter if vcard file is exported with Address Book's UTF-16 or UTF-8 setting.
Reply