Outlook Ex. Contacts to text file

[Joe Consumer]

I’m tearin’ my hair out to fix this.

I’m running OS 10.4.3 on my new PB G4. Trying to switch over from my old broken PB G3 OS9 that smashed on the floor!!!! I’m having trouble moving my 800 Outlook Express 5.0.6 (running in classic) contacts to Mail. I got the messages OK but when I Export Contacts to a text file, only 200 of them appear. I’m in Outlook “desktop identity” and I noticed that the contacts that make it are an identical set to those in an older “Main Identity”. Very Peculiar. There they are in my address book, all 800 of them, but only 200 can be exported to text. I’m starting to cut and paste to make new cards for all these people - an hour later I’m still in the A’s!!!!!!!!!

In desperation, I trashed all the old identities leaving only “desktop identity” - didn’t help. I tried importing the data to Mail directly by going to the “desktop identity” file in Documents/Microsoft User Data/Identities/Desktop Identity/Mailing Lists but I wasn’t allowed to do that. Seems like I must get Outlook to make me a text file of my contacts to transport the data. Only, outlook is not translating the contacts set that I am seeing in my Outlook address book!

I hope I explained this clearly. I’m not a tech savvy kind of guy, just an educated consumer trying to send out a message to my friends. Any ideas?

Joe

 

[jpollock]

Here's one thing you can do, assuming you have a copy of Entourage X (this works with OE 5.02, so I assume it'd work with 5.01):

1) Make a folder on the Desktop
2) Highlight all the contacts in Outlook
3) Drag the contacts from Outlook into the folder you created in the Desktop
4) Open Entourage and drag the contacts from the folder onto the "Contacts" window of Entourage
5) Open Address Book and drag the contacts from Entourage's Contacts window onto Address Book

This should work. Unfortunately it doesn't seem possible to drag the desktop folder contents directly into Address Book without going through Entourage, so hopefully you have a copy.

 

[Satcomer]

Better yet Apple included an AppleScript to import the addresses for you since OS X 10.2. It is in /Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts/Import Addresses.scpt . Run this scrip[t and watch the magic.