Address book groups cannot be exported

[ghostrider]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Intel
Email Client: imap

I was going to post to the "Export Address Book Groups" discussion but it is closed.

Diane, I read your response to Decker 12 but don't understand, even after trying to do as you suggested. Perhaps you can elaborate when you have a moment.

I also agree with Decker 12 about the popup message "To export the contents of a group, select the group, drag it into the body of a new note, and then export the note." -- does not seem to make sense or be doable.

 

[Diane Ross]

I was going to post to the "Export Address Book Groups" discussion but it is
closed.

Threads are closed after a certain period of time to keep them from becoming
dumping grounds for additional posts. Really long posts with multiple people
asking questions gets awfully confusing.

Diane, I read your response to Decker 12 but don't understand, even after
trying to do as you suggested. Perhaps you can elaborate when you have a
moment.

I can't even see Decker's response to know exactly what was said. It might
be on Mactopia, but it's not showing up in the newsgroup messages. I'll just
try to explain how to export groups.

1) All group members should be in your Address Book and not just in a group.
Entourage can't see inside the groups to export so you want them in your
Address Book. Don't worry about them clogging up your view, you can use
other methods like categories to sort your entries to easily view them.

2) If you assign a category for that contact with the group name, this makes
it easy to export and recreate your groups. For example:

You have John Doe in a group, but not in your Address Book. If you drag the
icon from the group window to the Address Book window (showing all contacts)
it will automatically create a contact window with that person.

[Note: group members in your Address Book will have the little man icon, but
a blue circle to indicate they are not in your Address Book]

Before you save, you want to assign a category to this contact. Suppose the
group is for your Christmas cards. I would name the category "Group:
Christmas cards". If you start each group name with the tag Group this helps
you to sort and type in the name. Suppose you forgot what you named a
particular group. Typing Group into the "To" field will pop up all choices
that start with group.

3) Now that we have all group members in the Address Book with the assigned
category, you can select to export that category. Under File in the Menu bar
select File --> Export. Export as an .rge file. Select the category for that
group and export that category only.

4) Create a new Identity in Entourage and import the .rge file. NOW you can
export it as a tab delimited file.

5) If you want them as .vcf files simply drag the Address Book icon in the
folder window to the desktop.

If you use a lot of groups, I can attest that if you have database failure
and no backups trying to recreate your groups can be long tedious process.

Hope this helps!

 

[ghostrider]

Diane, Thank you very much for the detailed response! Since I use my iMac/Entourage strictly for personal use, about the only time I have time to look at Mactopia and respond is either late at night or on the weekends. Just wanted to let you know that I will respond but it could take a while. Thx.

 

[ghostrider]

Well, I guess I just must not be clicking on all cylinders. First, excuse the delay. I just spent time carefully following your suggestions but to no avail:

1. In your step 2, the moment I try to drag a blue circle from a group window, Entourage craters. This has happened multiple times and error reports are sent to MS.
2. Also in your step 2 you say "Typing Group into the "To" field will pop up all choices that start with Group." Unless I have an incorrect preference somewhere, this does not work for me.
3. I can't get your step 3 to work -- the message can't export groups results.

 

[ghostrider]

I found a simple solution that works for me that came from "cda" (Centre for Digital Arts):

Export/Import Groups in Entourage
Procedure to export Groups:

1. Open Entourage in the Address Book section.
2. Highlight the group that you want to export and press (command + C) to copy the group.
3. Open a text edit document or Word Document and paste (command + V) the contents there.

You can now email this document as an attachment to anyone.

Procedure to import Groups:

1. Once you have received the document with all the email addresses, save the attachment from entourage to the desktop of your computer.
2. Open the file with any text editor, i.e., Microsoft Word, select all the addresses and press (command + C) or copy all.
3. Switch to Entourage, to the section Address Book and click on add group.
4. Name the group with the appropriate name and click once where the list is displayed.
5. Paste the contents of the list, just press command + V or from the edit menu go to paste.
6. Check that all the addresses are correct.