December 2007 Archives

I recently found myself with a couple hundred vCards I needed in Outlook 2007.  Sadly, Outlook wants you to either import them individually or Save and Close each one.  Thankfully, there's a workaround.  I'm doing this with Vista and Office 2007.  I don't have my XP/2003 setup in front of me right now, so I can't test it.  But here's what you do:

1) Open Windows Contacts

2) Click Import

3) Select vCard (VCF file)

4) Select all the contacts to import, then click Open.  Let it do its thing.  OK.  So, now they're in Windows Contacts, and Outlook know how to import contacts from here.

5) Switch to Outlook.

6) Choose File, then Import and Export.

7) Choose "Import Internet Mail and Addresses", then click OK

8) Select Outlook Express...or Windows Mail.  Uncheck Import Mail.

9) Click Next.

10) Decide how you want to handle duplicates, then click Finish.

Voila!

I've been playing with Office 2007 for work.  However, my updated contact info is in OS X!  It should be simple enough to export the contacts as vCards and import them into Outlook as contacts, right?  Well...sorta...

Address Book thinks it's pretty cool to export all the contacts as one vCard.  (It's part of the 3.0 spec, I think.)  Outlook does not like that one bit.  It wants one vCard per person, please.

Being the lazy person that I am, I knew there had to be a better way to do it.  Google turned up some great choices, but they all involved me spending money for the functionality.  I'm about as cheap as I am lazy, so I kept searching.  If only there was a way to automate the process...

Automator to the rescue! I whipped up a quick workflow to export all cards as individual vCards into a folder on the desktop called vCards.  In an effort to spread my laziness, you can download the workflow.

Here's a quick rundown of what it does:

1) Creates a folder on the Desktop called vCards.
2) Finds all contacts where the name is not "" (not null).
3) Export all cards individually.

Voila!

Of course, if you want the vCards saved elsewhere, you can change that part in Automator.  For those that want to go with the flow, there's also an Application in the ZIP file.

Enjoy!