Importing text file databases into address book

I have a large csv formatted (all that easily allowed by my exporting database) that I want to import into addressbook. By the instructions this should work and so I diligently configured the "Text file import" screen to align the fields as they should be imported - and the sample entries shown in that window look and are configured exactly as they should be. However, when I click on the OK button in the "Text file import" window, I could not tell if it was importing one item or the thousands. But when I look at the address book it indicates that it imported all thousands of contacts. THE PROBLEM is that in the address book (which was previously essentially empty) the only items listed under "Names" is "No Name" (a huge number of them) and each one has NO other fields filled in. So it appears that nothing is importing despite that the Text file import screen shows everything set up correctly. Thoughts/help?

My problem is the same as Roderick. Text File Import reads my file and shows me the data that it will import. I dilligently assign all of the appropriate columns and press "OK"...Nothing happens. Any ideas?

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How do I import a word doc into address book

I have word doc with address labels, I want to import that into address book, how would I do that? If word can't do that I can also open it in Pages. Thank you.

The way to import datas in AddressBook is not what this forum is dedicated to.
Please go to
MacOS X 10.5 > Mail and AddressBook
or
MacOS X 10.4 > Mail and AddressBook
A quick search in AddressBook Help with the wonderful keyword "Import" teach us that AddressBook is able to import from:
vCard ;
format LDIF ;
TAB delimited file ;
CSV (comma-separated values)file.
So, it appears that the first thing to do would be to save your Word document as a TAB delimited file or as a CSV one.
Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE mardi 29 juillet 2008 17:57:29)

Import .txt (from Excel) into Address book not happening

I am attempting to import a .txt file (exported from an Excel file) containing 5000 contacts with email and phone details. In the Import dialogue I can map the columns to the Address Book properties. When I press OK the button stays blue (highlighted) for a few seconds but no import occurs. Not even the card being previewed.
What am I missing here? (Bit urgent too)

I had the same problem. I saved as tab-delimited in excel, closed it but upon import, address book would hang (spinning wheel or no response). So, I reopened the .txt file in Numbers instead, got rid of any strange lines, saved again as .txt. Then, I imported it into Address book and it was fine.
To see whether it had to do with Numbers or Excel, I reopened the .txt file in Excel also, did the editing out of strange lines/cells again, and imported into address book again without problems.
Seems like a really dumb hack, but it worked for me. I had 62 entries (address book always stalled at 5).

Can someone help me import perfect csv spreadsheet into address book?

I have spent almost two years perfecting my excel spreadsheet with columns exactly matching the fields in address book, and saved as a CSV. When I try to import up comes a two-column list, fine up until column 8, where it suddenly starts saying "do not import" and "ignore" and "in use". I fiddle for hours but don't know what it means. Experiments lead to fields in the wrong places. I have read a whole correspondence about this, but solutions too complex for me.

Anything here help?
Importing contacts into Address Book
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=AddressBook/4.0/en/ad808.html

How to i import my messenger contacts into ADDRESS BOOK??

Hey guys,
how do i import my messenger contacts into my address book??
i have intel core 2 duo imac.
thanks a lot
23rd child

Hi...
Connect the iPhone ot your Mac and launch iTunes.
Select the iPhone under Devices left side of the iTunes window.
Select the Info tab from the menu.
Select Sync Contacts
Then click the Sync button bottom right side of the iTunes window.

Is there an easy way to import entourage email groups into address book?

I don't want to import the contacts individually, but as group. Any assistance would be appreciated. Entourage 2004 and address book is 4.1

First go to the avid site and download the avid codecs for the mac. Not sure if they'll have compatible codecs for such an old version, but worth a shot. then do a test export from the avid. It would probably be smart to convert the clips using compressor to match your fcp sequence settings. Not sure if the timecode would come across. You could note the timecode of the first frame on the avid and then modify the clip once imported into fcp. Test your workflow before doing a lot of work.
You might also check if automatic duck's got something that would work.
www.automaticduck.com
Wes Plate from AD posts occasionally here and is very helpful.
Message was edited by: Michael Grenadier

Can't import any addresses into Address Book to save my life

If my life were on the line, and its not, but if it were, and someone said the only way I could live would be to import addresses from a text file and into Address Book, I would be dead. Totally dead.
What I need to do is import my contacts from an old PC-based Palm Desktop software into MAC Address book. I have tried exporting both tab and comma delimited files on the PC and importing into the mac. No dice.
Next, I downloaded the Mac version of palm desktop and imported the text file into MAC-palm desktop. That worked, a little messy, but it worked. From there, I tried to export a tab-delimited file from MAC Palm Desktop and into MAC Address Book - DENIED!
Finally, I exported a VCF file from the MAC Palm Desktop to Import into MAC Address Book. That worked, BUT, every field has double quotes around it like "THIS". Not satisfactory.
Can anyone suggest anything?
Here is what I have:
Source: Addresses on a PC Based Palm Desktop software (OLD - based on a Palm IIIxe)
Desired Destination: MAC address book. OS X 10.4
Thanks for 'saving me'.

Denis Kefallinos wrote:
Ok, so I saved myself. I performed a VCF export on the PC, which was able to be read in by the Address Book on the Mac. Don't know why I didn't try that earlier. Thanks for the replies.
Congratulations, Survivor Man!
No, really, I don't know how I missed it, since I've done the same .vcf export a number of times.
Good Computing.

Importing records into Address Book

I note the difficulties some have had importing records. I too am having problems. I'm trying to get my Filemaker databases into Address Book so that I can then move them to my iPod. Exporting from Filemaker is fine, and importing into Address Book appears to be. However on closer examination it isn't, as all the records have been imported but not all the fields in all the records. As the import isn't perfect, it's arguably useless.
Anyone else had this experience? Any suggestions as to where the problem lies? And has anyone found the best way to get Filemaker databases onto iPods?
Thanks.

If you open Address Book, click on Card menuitem and select Edit Template. This will show you what the current template is and what fields may be added to the template.
You can then edit the LDIF file when it's created to select only the desired export fields that will match the template.
I believe when you then import into Address Book you will have an opportunity to match up the corresponding fields. Been so long since I did this I don't remember.

I have the answer to Importing VCards into Address book

Ok after reading all the forums etc and banging my head against the wall for a couple of hour I have found a two stage solution to Importing VCards from Outlook into Address book.
As I have 978 contacts in about 14 categories I had to find an efficient solution, firstly I downloaded a small program called "Outpod": Backup iPod to PC,copy songs from iPod to computer,iPod to iTunes whilst it is old and talks about iPod it works perfectly on my Outlook 2010 version.
It doesn't actually "install", just run the .exe file from anywhere after you extract it. In Outpod select "Contacts" if you have multiple profiles it will then prompt for which profile to use, expand your Contacts list, and then select "categories" on the top bar.
All contacts are now displayed in their correct category, select all of the contacts in the first category, right click, and select you want to export from a Category using Outpod, insert a thumbdrive on the PC, right click and select "Save selected items in one file", Outpod will ask you where you wish to save the file and gives you the opportunity to name the file. Just name the file the same name as the category you are exporting to, and repeat for all categories until you have them all on the USB stick.
Now to the Mac. Open Address Book on the Mac, create Groups (not "Smart Groups") to match all your categories. Now insert the thumb drive into the Mac, open it in the Finder until you can see all your files. with both windows open, highlight the Group in Address Book and then double click the corresponding file in the finder window. Shazam! all those contacts will appear in the correct group. repeat for all other Groups.
I find it astonishing that Apple just ignore issues like this, and "Last Import" not clearing it's cache for instance. So now I just have to figure out how to get a movie to auto play on a Keynote slide, another great product dissapointment, anyone?
Cheers
Tex260Z

Thank you thank you. UTF 16 did the trick. What I was trying to do was import/save addresses i found on whitepages.com directly to my address book. I can't seem to find an ideal way tht doesn't involve a few steps of cutting and pasting. anyone?

Best way to import addresses from outook into address book?

is there a way to import a csv file in its entirety?
thanks!

Address Book can import a tab delimited or CSV text file. Open Address Book, select Address Book Help from the Help menu, search for: import.
Or you can try a third-party utility such as AB Transfer - 2.1a (VersionTracker or MacUpdate) to assist in transferring datafiles.
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Can't import csv document into address book

Hi folks, I can't import a csv document into address book. Just get a spinning wheel. I am an OSX 10.5.9 (Leopard) I exported a csv file from Excel then tried to import but nothing happens except a spinning wheel some times.
Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
Ed Carreon
http://www.carreonphotography.com

You need to have setup your document with the appropriate fields for each piece of data, otherwise Address Book can't import it. If you take your current Address Book and export all the contacts as a single vCard file, then use this online tool (http://labs.brotherli.ch/vcfconvert/) to convert them to a CSV file, you can open the result in Excel or Pages to see how your document should be setup when you export it to CSV for importing into Address Book.

Importing into Address Book with Custom Fields from a Text File.

Hello
I'm a teacher and like to create contacts for my students. The information that I want in each contact besides their name, email address and phone number are their
student id's, semester enrolled, class number and class title. For these four fields I create a "Custom" field with the appropriate names: "ID", "Term", "Course" and "Class" respectively.
All this information I can download from the school's server in a CSV file.
To import the information into Address Book, I choose "File -> Import -> Text File" and then select the CSV file that I downloaded. The import utility opens up correctly showing all the fields I would like to import, however, many of the fields are marked as "Do not import." When I click on that term to select my Custom fields, they do not show up. Is this a bug or "feature" of the Address Book? It seems to me that if you are allowed to create useful custom fields, you should be able to import data into them as well.
If I'm just ignorant of how to do this, I would appreciate some help. If there is no way to currently do this efficiently, it would be nice to have this feature added to the Address book in the near future.
Thanks for your consideration,
Gary

Thanks for posting your question and the reply from rojok...
I'm a teacher as well - in Entourage I was able to just copy a column of email addresses (say from an Excel spreadsheet, downloaded from the school's server here at U MD) and then create a group and simply paste that list into the group. Address Book makes you do the extra step of importing all the addresses first. (Note: Your last imported list of contacts in this manner shows up as "Last Import" in the groups lists column to the left in Address Book - so to add contacts to a Group there, you select that Last Import group, click once in that list column one contact, say, then select all of the list - then Command + A, for select all - then drag them all to your group you've made - i.e. "MySpringClassList"). This is NOT very intuitive I might add and incredibly cumbersome of a process.
To get around the customizable info I needed to import... I just chose options that I don't regularly use for those things I needed to import - i.e. student I.D., these I placed under "ICQ Other" - that way they're imported at least.
Good luck,
Andrew

Problem importing CSV or tab-delimited file into Address Book

I am trying to import a text file (tab delimited) or csv file into address book. The files are created in Excel and consist 8 columns with address info (first name, last name, street, city etc). For the sake of simplicity, the file only contains 2 records - so all in all 3 rows with data where the first row contains the headers as described above.
I am perfectly able to import the fields first name, last name using Address Book's text import feature. However, as soon as I try to map Address Book's address field (Home, work or other) to my text file's headers, the import wizard stops responding. I can still scroll through the records with the left and right error, but the record count is screwed up ("-3 of 2") and clicking the OK button doesn't result in anything.
So I am able to import the names but not the addresses - so I better rename the Address Book to Name Book
Any clue of what's going wrong?

I've been wrestling with the exact same problem. I have come to a solution, though serendipitously. The address variables belong to a group say address Office.
1 - I creted a column with address Office which clued in AddressBook the the existence of the data for +address Other+ (and it assigned the columns ot the proper data)
2 - address book does have an entry of address with all group elements of same colour, normally. I reassign address other to address office
3 - I also assign address office (in right-hand column) to address office.
At this point I have two groups of address office
4 - I indicate to the second group 'do not import'
5 - Then hit OK
It seems that this loop is necessary to instantiate the proper group name to the group of variables. Why? who knows. Bad UI? Clearly. Apple engineers should've thought about it before? no kidding...

Importing .wab file into address book or anywhere else on my mac

Hello all,
I'm trying to import a Windows .wab file into Address Book (or anywhere else on my Mac for that matter) but can't find a way to make the two like eachother.
I got the file from someone else and do not have a Windows computer to use in the process.
Any suggestion would be most welcome!

Unfortunately those files are in a format unknown to any Mac application. What you may try is this utility but I do not know that it will convert only the .wab file, but it's supposed to be able to convert Outlook data to an OS X readable format.
In the future be aware that Outlook data files are incompatible with OS X. Have your Windows friends export their data files in a readable format such as Comma or Tab delimited text files.

Can't complete .dsv file import into Address Book

Hi folks, this is driving me insane (and has been for months off and on!)
I exported all my contacts from Entourage and want to import them into Address Book.
The file is a .dsv file. I select File>import>text file and locate the file.
I then check each field to make sure the information on the right corresponds to the field title on the left.
I can click the forward arrow at the bottom and I can click the OK button - but it doesn't seem to do ANYTHING!
I can see the cards individually as I click the right arrow button. I've even tried clicking through and hitting OK on each one individually but when I get to my final contact, nothing happens.
I have wasted so many hours on this. Can someone please help me complete the import of this CSV file (Help is worse than useless on this subject!)
Many many thanks!
David.

Thanks for the quick reply Mort but unfortunately I no longer have the Entourage data (just the exported DSV file) and I had already read and tried the other thread.
It all seems to work fine but when I've finished there's no option to complete or get rid of the box with the field information in it.
The OK button is clickable (ie not greyed out) but doesn't seem to do anything.
I really don't want to have to manually enter this data but with the time it's taking me to resolve the import problem I'd be quicker re-typing everything!
Any other suggestions/fixes anyone?
Thanks
David.

Importing text file databases into address book

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