Convert Entourage groups to Mail/Address Book groups

Jun 30, '09 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: jmem

I have found a workaround to the vexing question of how to transfer group mailing lists from Entourage to Mail. This is really much less difficult than a 12-step process might seem, and most Mac veterans will pick it up quickly, but I wrote it here in great detail for the benefit of any newbies. As the Mac veteran knows the Mac is intuitive and as usual much more difficult to explain in words than to actually do in practice, and it works!

Read on for the detailed step-by-step...

  1. Create or open a previously-sent group email in Entourage from Sent Items. (I usually send to group mailings with the addresses in the BCC address field to protect the recipients' addresses from being seen by other members of the list.)
  2. From the toolbar of the previously-sent group email select Resend. The message appears as it was originally sent.
  3. In the BCC field (if you use that for your group addresses) you will see the names of your group email recipients listed across the field, with a little head and shoulders figure or silhouette before each name. Click on the first silhouette.
  4. The address fields will drop down, showing To, Cc, and Bcc; names and email addresses will appear in a list something like this: Mary Smith <mary@xxxxxxxxxx.com> and so on down the list. Emails without names will just appear as email addresses without the angle brackets. That's okay.
  5. Click on one of the silhouettes (not the email address) in the list, selecting it. Then do a Select All (Command-A or Edit » Select All). The entire list will be highlighted.
  6. Now, the tricky part...with the mouse, grab, drag and drop the entire list into an open blank Microsoft Word document. It should fill the page with your names and addresses.
  7. Even trickier: After saving the Word document, go to the Edit menu in Word and select Replace. In the Find what field, enter > (greater-than sign). In the Replace With field, put >,[space], where [space] is an actual press of the Space key. (This will be easier -- especially to see the space -- if you turn on Show Nonprinting Characters in the view section of Word's Preferences. This should also be accessible in the Word toolbar, designated by a button with the paragraph mark icon.)
  8. Click on Replace All. After doing this, all email addresses will be followed by a comma and a space, instead of butting up immediately against the next name or address. It will go from looking like this:

    Mary Smith <mary@xxxxxxxxxx.com>Joe Barf <joe@xxxxx.com>

    ...to looking like this:

    Mary Smith <mary@xxxxxxxxxx.com>, Joe Barf <joe@xxxxx.com>, and so on.
  9. Save the Word document, then open Mail, click on New Message, and place the cursor in the Bcc address field.
  10. In your newly-saved Word document containing your group list, select all as described above. Then manually click once and hold the mouse button and drag the entire highlighted text (all of it) to the Bcc field in the new email in Mail and release the mouse button. Your entire group list will appear in the Bcc field. The names will appear for those addresses with names; for those without names, the email address will simply appear. Then Click on Save as Draft in Mail.
  11. Open Address Book and click on the Plus sign (+) at the bottom left of the Group column. A new field will appear with Group Name in it. Name the group.
  12. Reopen the email you just created from the Drafts section on the left side of the main Mail window. Click in the Bcc field of that message and do a Select All, highlighting all the addresses in the field. Again with the mouse, grab and drag all those highlighted names/addresses to the new Group Name listing in the groups section of the Address Book and release. Alternatively, you can click on the group name, opening a new name column, and drag and drop the highlighted list there. It makes no difference.

    A drop-down alert will appear asking Are you sure you want to import ____ [number] cards?, with a question mark button, a Review Duplicates button, a Cancel button, and an Import button. Click Import and you will now have your group address list available in Mail as well as in Entourage!
[robg adds: While Word is used in the hint, any word processor should work fine, as long as it supports find and replace. Also, if any of your entries don't show have user names, you'll have to manually edit the file to add the comma-space separator, as the above replacement won't see them (as there aren't any angle brackets for those entries).]

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