Import Outlook Express data into Address Book

Jan 09, '03 09:32:16AM

Contributed by: simX

The other day I was trying to help a relative make the switch from OS 9 to OS X (he hadn't been using OS X too much), and he wanted his e-mail set up in Mail.app and his addresses in Address Book. I got the e-mails over fine, but the addresses were giving me trouble.

Outlook Express for OS 9 seems to export contacts in a non-standard format (go figure). It looked like it was LDIF format, but I don't think it was because Address Book was refusing to import it. I was trying to find programs that would do the import, but then I found an easier way:

  1. First use Outlook Express to export the whole address book.

  2. Go into the Netscape Communicator 4.7x folder (this is, by default, installed with OS 9), open up the "Import" folder, and use the Import application to "import" the Outlook Express address book and immediately spit it back out as a standard LDIF file.

  3. Go into Address Book and import the converted address book file.
I'm not sure if Entourage has the same problem or not, but I thought this would be useful to those people who use Outlook Express in OS 9.

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