How to import from old address book?

Question

Hi all, I've searched the net about my problem but with no result.
I have an old mac (a G3 iMac running 10.3.9) with a lot of contacts on its Address Book, and I do mean a lot. The computer is completely dead, but I have a copy of the contents of its internal hard disk on a new mac running Lion. My problem is importing the old contacts into the new Address Book. The file formats have changed and the old files can't be imported into the new application, they are not even recognized as addressbook files. Obviously I can't export from the old system since it's not running. The old AddressBook.data file is a terrible junk of names, addresses, telephone numbers and everything else organized in an incomprehensible way (I can't just manually copy the addresses from the file). Does anyone know how to import those contacts into the new format? Otherwise, I'll have to find somebody who owns an old system with an old Address Book application so that I can export the files from there. Thanks a lot

Answer 1

As it's been 3 months, you probably have resolved this by now, but I had a similar problem today and resolved it with help from a tech at the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store.
If you ever backed up your "Library" folder from your old Mac, it contains the "Application Support" folder which in turn contains the "Address Book" folder.
On your new iMac, running Lion:
1)open Finder
2)select "Go" on the menu
3)with the "Go" window open, press and hold down the "Option" key on your keybord. Doing this will expose the hidden "Library" folder.
4) in the Library folder you will find "Application Support"
5) in the "Application Support" folder, you will find the "Address Book" folder
6) assuming you have the old "Address Book" folder from within the backed-up "Library Folder" from you old iMac, delete the "Address Book" folder on your new iMac and copy your old backed-up Address Book folder to the "Application Support" folder in its place.
7) Open the Address Book application and you should see your contact records. 
I just finished doing this and it worked for me.
Cheers