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Making multiple changes to Address Book entries Apps
After my office moved to a new location, I had to change about 30 addresses, work phone, and fax numbers. Instead of doing it one at a time, I pondered how to do this efficiently and came up with the following ... if you are an isync user, you may want to run a sync just before starting this as an added layer of defense. Here's how I did it:
  1. Create a group and put the contacts in that group (this makes organizing and viewing only them easier later). Then select all of the contacts in your new group and drag them to the desktop to create a single Vcard file of all of them.

  2. Duplicate this vcard file, and delete all of the contacts in the new group (you want to delete them, not remove them from the group).

  3. Open the duplicate vcard file in your favorite text editior, my selection was TextEdit, and find and replace the strings that you want to change.

  4. When you've got it right, drag the edited vcard file back onto the group, and it will add the contacts back into Address Book with the changes.
If everything goes haywire, you can always drag the original vcard file onto the group to get back to where you started. For me, there was no problem, and I have pictures embedded into most of my contacts. They came back in as well.
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Making multiple changes to Address Book entries | 10 comments | Create New Account
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Making multiple changes to Address Book entries
Authored by: MattHaffner on Sep 22, '04 04:43:22PM

Is it really necessary to delete the cards from the book? If you don't, I bet you'll just get the usual card sync routine run on all the cards, which lets you double check your changes. The address book sync implementation is one of the slickest features of the app.



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Making multiple changes to Address Book entries
Authored by: Anoble on Sep 22, '04 06:32:14PM

Ah, I hadn't thought of that. Good idea.



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Making multiple changes to Address Book entries
Authored by: adrianm on Sep 22, '04 05:14:41PM

Comment on things going haywire... just Edit -> Backup Database before hand....



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Making multiple changes to Address Book entries
Authored by: rameeti on Sep 23, '04 09:07:39AM

That would be: File / Back up database



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Making multiple changes to Address Book entries
Authored by: RodK on Sep 22, '04 08:47:29PM

I honestly think this is the most useful hint I've ever seen here.

No offense to all of the deep thinking Unix geeks, but this is what it's all about.



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Making multiple changes to Address Book entries
Authored by: gourls on Sep 23, '04 12:26:35AM
Really cool. I can believe that it is efficient. Love it.

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School is a hard life.........you had better believe it.

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Making multiple changes to Address Book entries
Authored by: altimac on Sep 23, '04 02:05:02AM

i know it is not really a tip, but i use OD4Contact (www.objective-decision.com) which is a really great AB replacement (does much more than just AB...). In particular, it offers a multiple edition of contacts (a la iTunes) in a simple process. It's fast and user friendly !

you can use it just for demo if you want ;)



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Making multiple changes to Address Book entries
Authored by: david-bo on Sep 23, '04 04:31:06PM

Not a hint.

What's up with peopel submitting hints recently? Why do you even bother to submit such trivial and basic 'hints'?

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Making multiple changes to Address Book entries
Authored by: MattHaffner on Sep 23, '04 05:01:05PM

Why is this not a hint?

Your average user has no clue what vCard format is, that the Address Book can export/import to/from it, or that it is able to be edited by a text editor.

Smells pretty hint-ish to me...



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Making multiple changes to Address Book entries
Authored by: hamarkus on Sep 24, '04 09:12:52AM

Small drawback: you have to add all the changed contacts to their respective groups again, and unfortunately there is no direct way to check which groups a given contact is part of (other than going into all groups and searching for it).



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