Ross at Simplehelp has written an excellent tutorial with screenshots on how to get your contact information out of the Gmail and into Address Book for use in Mail.app.

The app used in the process is called Address Book Importer , a clever utility that allows the user complete control over how to map the fields for import. It is also free for a single use (although the developer asks for a small donation if you use it regularly).

He has just released a beta version (2.0.5b3) which is a universal binary and features several fine-tuning tweaks.

The interface is clean and easy to understand:

The tutorial even tells you what to do with the mysterious “name” entry that appears when the import is finished.

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Export Address Book is an app which (unsurprisingly) exports all the data in your Address Book into an independent data file that you can archive, use with a Microsoft Word Merge or FileMaker database or import into your favourite web-based email service.

It is a universal binary and comes with an Automator action to automate repeated exports.

The app overs considerable control over the export process, allowing you to select which records to export, which fields from those records, how to order them and whether to give the exported data customised labels:

A new version (1.1) released today includes two new formats, CSV and HTML tables, for the exported data and more options for handling line breaks, as you can see from the new options pane:

Export Address Book is shareware (10 Euros = USD 12.50) and is available from the developer’s web site.

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Looking for a way to export your Address Book contacts into a webmail service like Gmail?

Antonio Lorè has written a simple but efficient utility that will export all your Address Book contacts into a CSV file ready for exporting into another email client or webmail service.

As you can see from the icon, he is thinking mainly of GMail, but a number of webmail services can import contacts in CSV format.

The app presents you with a simple interface:

All you need to do is select the location for the finished export and click “Export to CSV”. Easy.

A to G (formerly AddressBookToCSV) and the Swiss Brotherli web site offer the same exporting service.

Address Book to CSV Exporter is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .

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Since Gmail is all the rage, here’s another way of getting your contact information out of Address Book and into Gmail’s web interface or into Thunderbird.

A Swiss web site offers a web-based utility that will convert vCards dragged out of Address Book into CSV format for Gmail or LDIF format for Thunderbird.

Just drag the cards out of Address Book, and upload them into the converter.

The interface is easy to navigate and understand:

It also offers the option of filtering out contacts without email addresses. A non-Gmail-specific CSV format separated by comma, tab or semi-colon is provided as well.

Of course, you can also use Ken Ferry’s AddressBook2CSV to convert your contacts into a format that Gmail understands.

Now moving over to Thunderbird should be as painless for your contacts as switching from Thunderbird to Mail.app.

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Both macOSXHints and mozillaZine carry the same tip for importing email messages into Mail.app from Thunderbird. It involves copying the relevant mailboxes to the Desktop, adding the “.mbox” extension to the files and then importing them via Apple Mail’s Import feature.

Contacts can be exported from Thunderbird’s Address Book in either CSV (Comma Separated Value) or tab delimited format.

You can then import them into OS X’s Address Book using its native import feature or using a third-party app like Address Book Importer (which is free for a “one-off” use).

UPDATE: In the comments to this entry, Andreas Amann points out some problems with the tip on masOSXHints and MozillaZine. He notes that Eudora Mailbox Cleaner now handles the importing of Thunderbird mailboxes as well (and better). Thanks.

Going the other way? (Shame on you!) CosmicSoft’s emlx to mbox converter looks promising for Mail 2.0 users on the way out. Use it, then follow the second half of the instructions for importing emails from kmail in the Thunderbird FAQ.

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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:

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