THE 2008 ENTOURAGE Challenge: Import OS X's Address Book

You figure in 2008 a simple import of a CSV file would not be difficult for Microsoft.  Well, think again.  I do use apple mail for some of my email addresses, but for work, I gave up fighting the battle and just use Entourage.  I upgraded this week to MAC OS 2008 on my work laptop.  To much of my surprise I could not export a CSV from ADDRESS BOOK.  So I tried using the Address Book to CSV Exporter 1.3a Exporter  from the Apple  website.  While this did a great job, Entourage could not read it.  I can only imagine it was due to the header record not being complete.  At the same time I found another utility Address Book Exporter and it transferred immediately.  Difference of the two file exporters seems to be the latter has a more complete header record that Entourage finds more acceptable:

Address Book 2CSV seems to not include everything that Entourage would like: 

First Name    Last Name    Title    Suffix    Nickname    Company    Job Title    Dept    Work Street Address    Work City    Work State    Work Zip    Work Country/Region    Work URL    Home Street Address    Home City    Home State    Home Zip    Home Country/Region    Home URL    Home Phone 1    Home Phone 2    Home Fax    Work Phone 1    Work Phone 2    Work Fax    Pager    Mobile Phone    Main Phone    Assistant Phone    Custom 1:    Custom 2:    Custom 3:    Custom 4:    Email Address 1    Email Address 2    Email Address 3    Email Address 4    Email Address 5    Email Address 6    Email Address 7    Email Address 8    Email Address 9    Email Address 10    Email Address 11    Email Address 12    Email Address 13    Custom 1    Custom 2    Custom 3    Custom 4    Custom 5    Custom 6    Custom 7    Custom 8    Custom date 1    Custom date 2    Spouse    Birthday    Anniversary    Notes    Age    Astrology sign    Bloodtype    Furigana Company Name    Furigana First Name    Furigana Last Name    Furigana Spouse Name    Interests

Where as Address Book Exporter seems to satisfy enough familiar fields that Entourage does recognize it as a valid CSV format.   As soon as I pointed to the EXPORTED CVS via Entourage's EXPORT I received the following Dialog:

Whatever the reason, this tool just worked.  The above dialog does allows the addition of fields and modify current field mappings.  Nonetheless, in less then 5 minutes from download, execution, exporting, conversion, and importing contacts in Entourage was < 5 minutes. 

Address Book Exporter has been working since 2003 and seems the quckest to market and at the end of the day the less time to think about such trivial tools the better.   

tags: upgrade  entrouage  import  contacs  cvs  export  

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