Lucas Chan :: Weblog

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:

1. Open Outlook Contacts list.
2. Select all your contacts. This may be easiest in “Address Cards” view.
3. In the “Action” menu, select “Forward as vCard”.
4. Wait a moment while Outlook creates a new email with all of your contacts attached to it as vCards.
5. Send this email to yourself (be careful not to send it to anyone else, obviously).
6. 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.