In a nutshell, Microsoft makes it difficult. Fortunately it -can- be done.
Don’t bother with any of Outlook’s “export as text/cvs” functions, importing these files is nearly impossible. Exporting as vCard is conveniently not an option. “Save As” vCard is possible, but you can only do it for one contact at a time. Lame!
Here’s the easy way to get Outlook to save a whole bunch of vCards for you:
- Open Outlook Contacts list.
- Select all your contacts. This may be easiest in “Address Cards” view.
- In the “Action” menu, select “Forward as vCard”.
- Wait a moment while Outlook creates a new email with all of your contacts attached to it as vCards.
- Send this email to yourself (be careful not to send it to anyone else, obviously).
- Upon receipt of this email, save all the attachments to a location your mac can access, then import them into your Mac OS X Address Book. Yay!
Like I said, don’t bother with Outlook’s “export cvs/text” or “save as” functions. They’re extremely clunky and the amount of manual clean up you need to do is insane.
Next challenge… Calendar.
Update: Calendar instructions posted here.