Exporting categories from Entourage

[Simon T]

Help! I am having a major problem exporting a copy(s) of a specific
list of contacts within the Entourage address book in a format to show
only a filtered view (eg name, company and city or country). I have
followed the Export route, categories etc to the desk top (and
eventually excel), but get a message that there is no data in the
specified category.( I use an external Exchange Server). I am on a G4
OSX 10.4.6 wih Entourage 2004. I have downloaded a couple of days ago
the script Import/Export,but am unsure how to get run or use it.
Suggestions such as doing an Advanced rebuild I beieve runs the risk of
loosing all my categories. This is my business database and cant take
that risk. Many thanks for any help.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Hi,

Help! I am having a major problem exporting a copy(s) of a specific
list of contacts within the Entourage address book in a format to show
only a filtered view (eg name, company and city or country). I have
followed the Export route, categories etc to the desk top (and
eventually excel), but get a message that there is no data in the
specified category.( I use an external Exchange Server).

I'm not exactly sure what you did, but I wanted toemphasize the fact
that Exchange servers don't sync categories...
If you view your contacts and sort according to the categories, do you
see contacts listed in the category you are trying to export?
Entourage itself exports all contacts and doesn't let you export by
category. I therefore assume you have used Paul Berkowitz's
Import-Export scripts. I have no problem whatsoever exporting my
contacts by category using Paul's scripts. Maybe Paul will have a better
idea of what is going on :-\

I am on a G4
OSX 10.4.6 wih Entourage 2004. I have downloaded a couple of days ago
the script Import/Export,but am unsure how to get run or use it.
Suggestions such as doing an Advanced rebuild I beieve runs the risk of
loosing all my categories. This is my business database and cant take
that risk. Many thanks for any help.

If you rebuild the database, Entourage will wipe out the local Excahnge
cache and re-dopwnload everything from the Excahnge server. Since
Exchange doesn't sync categories, you will loose all category
attribution in the process.
To workaround this issue, I used an AppleScript to write the categories
in one of the custom fields of each contacts (I wasn't using them).
Since these fields sync to Exchange, I can use this trick to make sure
the data is saved and synched to Exchange. If ever categories are lost,
all I have to o is run a reverse script that affects categories based on
the information found in the custom field.
You can find the script (and more info) here:
http://www.cortig.net/wordpress/?p=73
It could be of some use...


Corentin