P
Pitch
In the event you ever have a friend who wants to free themselves from
AOL prison, here is the clearest method I've seen of getting their
address book and email addresses over to a Mac. This trick will work
for Entourage, since getting contacts from Apple's Address Book isn't
difficult (I also think the resulting text file can be imported.)
I take a kind of evil pleasure in helping people get off of AOL, so
this was a great article for me.
Here's the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56865-2004Dec11.html
Cleaned up text version is below, for your master OSX help file.
--
Copying an AOL Address Book Over to a Mac
Sunday, December 12, 2004
I just bought a Mac and would like to copy all the e-mail addresses I
have on AOL into the Mac address book program, which I find easier to
navigate and use with other applications.
America Online for Mac OS X is a Roach Motel for contact lists -- this
program only lets this data in, not out. So you'll need to execute the
following three-step escape plan to liberate your address book and make
it readable to Apple's software. (Note that this workaround only
extracts e-mail addresses, not phone numbers or other contact info
stored on AOL).
First, sign into AOL and download its free Communicator e-mail program
(AOL keyword: Communicator). Install and run this, and it will
automatically fetch your AOL address book from the online service.
Select "All Contacts" from the list of categories in the left of that
window. Go to the File menu, choose "Export . . ." and save this "All
Contacts" file to your Mac's Documents folder.
Before Apple's Address Book can open this file, you must launder it
through different software. Download the free Mozilla Thunderbird mail
program (www.mozilla.org). Run it, declining its offer to import
existing mail data. Click its toolbar's address-book icon, then go to
the Tools menu and select "Import . . ." Choose "Address Books" and
"Text file" as your import types, then select the "All Contacts" file
you just saved. Thunderbird will put your AOL addresses in a new "All
Contacts" category. Select that, return to the Tools menu, choose
"Export . . ." and save the file as "Address Book contacts."
Step three: Open Address Book, go to the File menu's Import submenu,
choose "LDIF" and open "Address Book contacts." You'll have all those
addresses -- plus a vague feeling of resentment at AOL's unhelpfulness.
Don't forget to add "@aol.com" to any AOL screen names, so that non-AOL
applications can understand them.
The lesson here: To avoid this kind of hostage situation, avoid
software incapable of saving data in ways that other programs can read.
-- Rob Pegoraro
AOL prison, here is the clearest method I've seen of getting their
address book and email addresses over to a Mac. This trick will work
for Entourage, since getting contacts from Apple's Address Book isn't
difficult (I also think the resulting text file can be imported.)
I take a kind of evil pleasure in helping people get off of AOL, so
this was a great article for me.
Here's the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56865-2004Dec11.html
Cleaned up text version is below, for your master OSX help file.
--
Copying an AOL Address Book Over to a Mac
Sunday, December 12, 2004
I just bought a Mac and would like to copy all the e-mail addresses I
have on AOL into the Mac address book program, which I find easier to
navigate and use with other applications.
America Online for Mac OS X is a Roach Motel for contact lists -- this
program only lets this data in, not out. So you'll need to execute the
following three-step escape plan to liberate your address book and make
it readable to Apple's software. (Note that this workaround only
extracts e-mail addresses, not phone numbers or other contact info
stored on AOL).
First, sign into AOL and download its free Communicator e-mail program
(AOL keyword: Communicator). Install and run this, and it will
automatically fetch your AOL address book from the online service.
Select "All Contacts" from the list of categories in the left of that
window. Go to the File menu, choose "Export . . ." and save this "All
Contacts" file to your Mac's Documents folder.
Before Apple's Address Book can open this file, you must launder it
through different software. Download the free Mozilla Thunderbird mail
program (www.mozilla.org). Run it, declining its offer to import
existing mail data. Click its toolbar's address-book icon, then go to
the Tools menu and select "Import . . ." Choose "Address Books" and
"Text file" as your import types, then select the "All Contacts" file
you just saved. Thunderbird will put your AOL addresses in a new "All
Contacts" category. Select that, return to the Tools menu, choose
"Export . . ." and save the file as "Address Book contacts."
Step three: Open Address Book, go to the File menu's Import submenu,
choose "LDIF" and open "Address Book contacts." You'll have all those
addresses -- plus a vague feeling of resentment at AOL's unhelpfulness.
Don't forget to add "@aol.com" to any AOL screen names, so that non-AOL
applications can understand them.
The lesson here: To avoid this kind of hostage situation, avoid
software incapable of saving data in ways that other programs can read.
-- Rob Pegoraro