Address Book Importer Help

Introduction

Address Book Importer imports your contacts from one address book program into Apple's Address Book on Mac OS X. It does so using a file that you must provide and which you create using any program that is cabable of generating either one of:

  • A CSV (comma-separated value) file
  • A tab-delimited file

Note that CSV files must have a ".csv" extension to be recognized as such by Address Book Importer. Otherwise it is assumed to be a tab-delimited file.

Such files can come from programs running on any operating system, including but not limited to: Mac OS, Windows and Linux. Examples of such programs are:

  • TouchBase, TouchBase Pro
  • Now Contact
  • Addressbook
  • PhoneBook, PhoneBook Plus
  • FileMaker Pro
  • Microsoft Excel
  • AppleWorks
  • Entourage
  • Outlook, Outlook Express
  • Netscape Mail
  • Etc.

In general, such programs have a "Save As" or "Export" function to this file. Once generated, this file becomes the import file for the purpose of Address Book Importer.

Basic Operation

In most cases, using Address Book Importer is straightforward and done using the following steps.

  1. Launch Address Book Importer; An empty import window comes up.
  2. Click the Choose Import File button and use the file dialog to pick an import file previously obtained from another program; After a few seconds, the list of fields in the import file will appear in the left column.
  3. Associate the fields from the left to their appropriate Address Book counterpart by simply dragging them from the left to the empty slots on the right. If applicable, select an appropriate label for each field.
  4. At the bottom of the window, indicate whether you want all the imported contacts to be included in a specific group in Address Book. The default is "Imported Contacts".
  5. If the first contact in the import file is only a header that describes the fields, select "Import all records except first one" from the bottom popup.
  6. Click the Import button! After a few seconds, all your contacts will have been transfered to the Apple Address Book.

Saving the Association Map

If you need to perform the same import on a regular basis or even more than once on multiple computers, the associations you create can be saved to be reused later. Such a setup is called an association map and it is saved as a document that can be double-clicked or opened from Address Book Importer.

To save your association map, use the following steps.

  1. Set up your associations as described in steps 1 through 5 above.
  2. Use the Save Mapping command from the File menu. A file dialog appears.
  3. Enter a name and click Save. A document with the Address Book Importer icon is created when you indicated.

That's it. The next time you need to perform the same import, just open this association map from the Finder. An import window already set up will appear, into which you can simply drop an import file and then click Import.

TouchBase Pro Support

The format of the file created by TouchBase Pro can be incompatible with Address Book Importer, depending on what options you select to create it, and especially if you have multiline notes in your contacts. To remedy this situation, included is an applet called TouchBase Pro Fixer, along with the following instructions.

Export your contacts from TouchBase Pro:

  1. Select the Export command.
  2. In the dialog that appears, append the desired fields.
  3. You must set the field delimiter to 9.
  4. You must set the contact delimiter to 10.
  5. To facilitate the import, the Include Merge header option can be used.
  6. Click OK and save the file to disk.

Create a copy of the export file that is compatible with Address Book Importer:

  1. Launch TouchBase Pro Fixer and click the Proceed button.
  2. In the file chooser, select the export file you created earlier from TouchBase Pro.
  3. A few seconds later, TouchBase Pro Fixer will quit.

In the Finder, you should now see a second export file with "(fixed)" appended to its name. This is the file that you can now use to import your contacts using Address Book Importer in the normal manner.

Tips

Instead of using the Choose Import File button, you may just drag and drop the file directly into the window.

You can click on the left column header and pick any one of the first 50 contacts in the import file as the one currently displayed. This can be useful to be sure your associations are accurate.

An import field can be associated to more than one Address Book field.

Troubleshooting

Question I'm trying to import a CSV file but it doesn't seem to be recognized by Address Book Importer. What's up?

Answer A CSV file must have a ".csv" extension to be recognized as such by Address Book Importer.

Question I'm trying to import contacts that use characters other than the english alphabet, and they appear garbled in Apple's Address Book. How can I fix that?

Answer Use the Choose Import File As command from the File menu instead of the window button. You might have to experiment with the various choices.

Question The import works fine except for dates which don't get imported at all. Why don't they get imported?

Answer Recognition of dates currently works by assuming dates are formatted using the date format specified in System Preferences > International > Formats. However this only works if a yellow warning icon doesn't appear in that system preferences panel. If such a warning icon appears, then the format expected by Address Book Importer is the last format you had selected that wasn't showing the warning icon. In this case you need to:

  1. Pick a date format that doesn't show the warning.
  2. Then pick the setting you had before.

Question The import works fine except for dates which all come out as January 1, 2001. How can I fix that?

Answer Upgrade to Address Book Importer 2.0.7 or better. There was a bug in previous versions that was causing this to happen.