Entourage Contacts export to Outlook?

[Paul Le Veque]

I am trying to import my Contacts from Entourage on my Mac desktop machine
to Outlook 2003 on my new laptop and cannot seem to figure out how to
accomplish the mapping when importing into Outlook. I have exported a
tab-delimited text file from Entourage on the Mac and imported the file into
Outlook. When I get to the step that allows me to map the fields, I only
seem to have one field per contact (in most of the contacts, not all?) with
all the Entourage fields on that one line. There are boxes between each
Entourage field on that one line. Can anyone help? Thank you...

Paul Le Veque

 

[mmmmark]

Entourage Contacts export to Outlook?
I am trying to import my Contacts from Entourage on my Mac desktop machine to Outlook 2003 on my new laptop and cannot seem to figure out how to accomplish the mapping when importing into Outlook. I have exported a tab-delimited text file from Entourage on the Mac and imported the file into Outlook. When I get to the step that allows me to map the fields, I only seem to have one field per contact (in most of the contacts, not all?) with all the Entourage fields on that one line. There are boxes between each Entourage field on that one line. Can anyone help? Thank you...

Paul Le Veque

 

[Michel Bintener]

Mark, your answer is missing!

In the meantime, Paul, you might find it easier to use vCards instead of the
text file. You can create these by simply dragging your address book entries
to the desktop (or any other folder). I've never used Outlook 2003, but it
should be able to read the vCard file format. There is a limitation,
however: Entourage will only allow you to export 200 contacts at the same
time. In other words, if you have more than 200 contacts in your address
book, you'll have to export in several steps, by always selecting >200
contacts at a time.

Michel

 

[mmmmark]

Yeah, looks like it got sent before I was done.

I didn't have a "good" answer or at least not a solution. I was only going
to suggest that the OP try to examine the tab delimited file in Word and see
if indeed there are tabs where he needs them. I've had to do this in some
engineering text that is dumped out of tech equipment. A search and replace
of some of those boxes _might_ yield some paydirt.

-Mark

 

[Paul Le Veque]

Thanks for the suggestion, but when I attempt to do that Outlook or Windows
tells me that "vCards.vcf is not valid for this operation". I don't get it.
I have read the help files and both the tab-delimited and .vcf files are
supposed to work.

 

[Paul Le Veque]

Thanks. I checked as you suggested. The tabs are there. I just don't get it.
Entourage and Outlook help files suggest it should be rather
straightforward.

Paul

 

[Michel Bintener]

When you export your contacts by dragging them to the desktop, you should
get individual vCards for each contact. Can you not import these into
Outlook? Could you please describe what exactly you are doing to get the
vCards, and what exactly you are doing on the Windows side to import them
into Outlook? Mind you, I've never used Outlook, so I doubt that I'll be of
any help, but still, others might know more about Outlook and vCards. Does
the Import function not work? And how about simply dragging and dropping the
vCard files into Outlook's address book? An online search tells me that
Outlook should handle vCards just fine, and that there are only problems
with the single vCards produced by Apple's Address Book (which shouldn't be
a problem in this case, since we're talking about Entourage).

 

[mmmmark]

The other thing to consider is whether it is in a format that Windows likes.
It seems that text files are different based on what OS they are intended
for. I don't have the information in front of me, but it seems like some
like carriage returns and line feeds after each line and some don't.

The wrong format will confuse Outlook. Upon import, Outlook even makes a
difference between "Tab Separated DOS" and "Tab Separated Windows". Notice
they do not mention Mac or Unix, which are different animals. Might be
worth checking into.

-Mark

 

[Paul Le Veque]

Thanks for the suggestions. Still no luck...

I've tried the tab-delimited files and also vCard files. I am moving the
files from one computer to the other using a jump stick. The laptop appears
to recognize the vCard files; at least the file icons are correct and they
open. Dropping the vCard files on the address book on Outlook I get just
what PanJack did...blank entry windows.

Here's the sum total of what the Entourage help file says...
Copy messages or contacts from Entourage to a Windows-based computer
1. In Entourage, do one of the following:
€ To copy messages, drag the folder that contains the messages from the
Folders list to your desktop. Entourage saves the contents of the folder as
an MBOX-format text file.
€ To copy contacts, click Export on the File menu and follow the steps in
the Export Assistant. Copy the file to a PC-format disk. If you have access
to a network share that is connected to both Windows-based and Macintosh
computers, you can place the files on the network and then copy them from
either type of computer.
3. Copy the file from the disk to the computer's hard disk.
Followed by a primer on file extensions.

 

[Paul Le Veque]

I have used the Export function for vCards, which seems to create one file
and also the the drag and drop method you describe which produces individual
vCard files. Importing or dragging them into Outlook produces blank entries.

The tab-delimited import takes me back to my original question.

 

[Paul Le Veque]

Well, I figured out how to do it! On my Windoze laptop I imported the data
from the tab-delimited file into Excel as a tab-delimited Macintosh file.
Then, I saved the spreadsheet as a comma-delimited file. Next, I imported
that CSV file into Outlook and was able then to map each field. Sheesh!
Sorta' like going over your shoulder to ........

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Paul

 

[mmmmark]

Glad to hear it!

 

[DrDude]

Glad to hear it!

I just went through this horror. I thought that MS would adhere to
"standards" such as vcard, silly me. Further, I was stunned that 1 MS
product could not talk to another despite being on different platforms.

Anyway, what I did that ultimately worked was to drag the contacts from
Entourage into a folder on the desktop to create the 200+ vcards. Now
these Entourage vcards won't be recognized by Outlook (content is
blank). So I imported the vcards into the Palm Desktop for Mac (free
at Palm). From there, I exported the contacts as vcards. Moved to the
Windoze machine and into Outlook with no problems. Unbelievable that
MS makes one go through this.

Also, I may not be an ace at Outlook (it was for a coworker's machine),
but I could only import 1 at a time through the file menu. What I did
then was drag them into Outlook from the Finder (er, Explorer), but I
still got 200 windows of the individual contacts and had to save each
one. Whoever said that the you have to learn Windoze but the Mac was
made for the way YOU work was right on the money.

Hope this helps.

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

I just went through this horror. I thought that MS would adhere to
"standards" such as vcard, silly me. Further, I was stunned that 1 MS
product could not talk to another despite being on different platforms.

Well, you an either have standards or you can have them talking to each
other! <g>

Entourage is built from the ground up to support web standards. Outlook
supports it's own standards. So, they don't always play nicely together,
unfortunately.

Anyway, what I did that ultimately worked was to drag the contacts from
Entourage into a folder on the desktop to create the 200+ vcards. Now
these Entourage vcards won't be recognized by Outlook (content is
blank). So I imported the vcards into the Palm Desktop for Mac (free
at Palm). From there, I exported the contacts as vcards. Moved to the
Windoze machine and into Outlook with no problems. Unbelievable that
MS makes one go through this.

Did you try Paul B's Import/Export scripts?

Also, I may not be an ace at Outlook (it was for a coworker's machine),
but I could only import 1 at a time through the file menu. What I did
then was drag them into Outlook from the Finder (er, Explorer), but I
still got 200 windows of the individual contacts and had to save each
one. Whoever said that the you have to learn Windoze but the Mac was
made for the way YOU work was right on the money.

There must be a moral in there somewhere