Importing Contacts from Outlook or Outlook Express
Switchers moving over to Mac will want to bring their contacts with them after importing their mail into Apple Mail. I know of three ways to move contacts over:
1. Use ABFiller, an app that extracts contact information from your PST file.
2. Buy the Outlook2Mac program for USD 10.00. This costs money but it is also the easy way, although it only works with Outlook. Run the program on your PC and it painlessly converts your contacts, emails and calendar appointments into a format that Macs can understand. Transfer the files and import them into Apple Mail, Address Book and iCal. You’re done.
3. Or you can do it manually. Address Book can import data in CSV, vCard, LDIP or tab-separated formats.
In Outlook (at least in Outlook 2003), open your contact list, and select all the names. Then you have two options:
(i) Email them by clicking the “Forward as vCard” option from Outlook’s Actions menu. Each one will become an attachment in an email that you can then download in Apple Mail after emailing it to yourself. You then drop the attachments onto Address Book to import them.
(ii) Export them as vCards by Selecting the “Save as” option from the File menu. Choose the vCard format and save them to a memory stick or burn them to a CD. Then mount the mem stick or CD on your Mac and drag and drop the vCards onto the Address Book icon in your dock. Or open Address Book (in the Applications folder). Choose File > Import > vCards. Select the addresses you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re importing and click Open.
For Outlook Express, Apple outlines one way to do it. Select all your contacts (Tools > Address Book, then select all the names you want to transfer) in Outlook Express and drag them into a folder or burn them onto a CD. Transfer the folder to a memory stick or take the CD and mount it on your Mac. Drag the vCards created by the export from Outlook Express onto Address Book. Or open Address Book (in the Applications folder). Choose File > Import > vCards. Select the addresses you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re importing and click Open.
Tags: Address Book, Apple Mail, Apple Mail Tips, contacts, CSV, mail.app, outlook, outlook express, Outlook2Mac, switching, vcardsRelated posts
October 17th, 2005 at 12:11 am
[...] Getting your head around the new software is one thing. Moving your mail over from Outlook or whatever PC client you used is another. You can read some tips about how to do that here and here. [...]
October 29th, 2005 at 11:28 pm
thanks for the info.
Moving Contacts from Outlook 200 to an iBook
worked first time - after lots of aggro trying other ways.
November 2nd, 2005 at 5:26 pm
[...] Via Outlook Express Users with a premium Hotmail accounts can use Outlook Express to synchronise their contact list in OE with the web-based one (click on the Addresses, then go to Tools, Synchronize Now). Save them out as a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file and then they can follow the instructions in this tip: “Importing Contacts from Outlook or Outlook Express”. [...]
December 11th, 2005 at 7:10 am
ABFiller should be able to import Outlook contacts directly to your Address Book:
http://www.supermegaultragroovy.com/bin/ABFiller_0.5.1.dmg
December 11th, 2005 at 8:00 am
Thanks for the tip. I’ll check it out.
December 11th, 2005 at 8:29 am
[...] I’ve blogged three ways to import contacts from Outlook or Outlook Express into Address Book, using Outlook2Mac or by manual exporting and by using Mozilla. All of them are long and involved. [...]
September 26th, 2006 at 4:28 am
hey,
thanks for the tip. easy and works perfectly. I imported OE contacts.
January 21st, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Why do you say that importing CSV is a manual job? It takes only couple of minutes..
February 24th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Is there any way to move your groups from Outlook to Entourage or Mail.app? Thanks! Larry