Difficulty importing Categories into Address Book Groups
Hi,
Is there a way when importing vCards to Address Book, for the imported contacts to be automatically assigned to an appropriate Group or Groups? I propose a work-around solution to the issue of importing Categories when adopting Apple's Address Book application, but seek a full solution. Unsolved thread examples:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6276525 (Palm)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7312165 (Outlook)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6226853 (Entourage)
The vCard "CATEGORIES Type Definition" does exist in Address Book (I'm working with v4.11 in OS X 10.5 Leopard); Apple uses "Group" rather than "Category." BUT, 2 issues remain:
1. You can't ascertain assigned Categories looking at a card.
2. Address Book will export the catagories, but will not import them (from what I can tell; please explain if I'm wrong).
To amplify:
If you select a card, I can't tell what group(s) it is a member of by looking at the card.
An imported card won't be placed in groups corresponding to its Categories, whether the Group name(s) pre-exist or whether using vCard 2.1 or 3.0. It appears that the Categories information is discarded on import; if you import a vCard with one or more Categories, it is not assigned to any groups, and if you immediately turn around and export it, no Categories information is exported. Consequently, a global find-and-replace text edit of the vCard file to be imported doesn't solve the issue (unless there exists a specific field such as X-ABGROUPS that Address Book will import, that I don't know and can't figure out).
One Solution:
The best work-around I was able to develop: a method to quickly assign appropriate cards to their respective Groups (categories) once imported.
The Palm Desktop vCard exports the Category fields as:
X-Palm-Category1:Family
X-Palm-Category2:Business
For your information, Address Book exports groups as:
CATEGORIES:Family,Business
I performed the following:
1. Exported all contacts from Palm using vCard.
2. Imported the vCard data into Address Book.
3. Created a Group called "Family"
4. Created a "Smart Group"; Edit > Edit Smart Group > 'Note' 'contains' 'X-Palm-Category1:Family'
5. Selected all the contacts now in the Smart Group and added (drag and drop) them to the Group called "Family"
6. Repeated steps 3, 4, and 5 for each Category name (Family, Friends, Business, Work, etc.)
Request for help:
If you know a better solution to importing the category information into Address Book, please respond!
If you know how to tell, looking at a card, what Groups it is a member of, please respond and let me know how.
Thanks, Karl
Is there a way when importing vCards to Address Book, for the imported contacts to be automatically assigned to an appropriate Group or Groups? I propose a work-around solution to the issue of importing Categories when adopting Apple's Address Book application, but seek a full solution. Unsolved thread examples:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6276525 (Palm)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7312165 (Outlook)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6226853 (Entourage)
The vCard "CATEGORIES Type Definition" does exist in Address Book (I'm working with v4.11 in OS X 10.5 Leopard); Apple uses "Group" rather than "Category." BUT, 2 issues remain:
1. You can't ascertain assigned Categories looking at a card.
2. Address Book will export the catagories, but will not import them (from what I can tell; please explain if I'm wrong).
To amplify:
If you select a card, I can't tell what group(s) it is a member of by looking at the card.
An imported card won't be placed in groups corresponding to its Categories, whether the Group name(s) pre-exist or whether using vCard 2.1 or 3.0. It appears that the Categories information is discarded on import; if you import a vCard with one or more Categories, it is not assigned to any groups, and if you immediately turn around and export it, no Categories information is exported. Consequently, a global find-and-replace text edit of the vCard file to be imported doesn't solve the issue (unless there exists a specific field such as X-ABGROUPS that Address Book will import, that I don't know and can't figure out).
One Solution:
The best work-around I was able to develop: a method to quickly assign appropriate cards to their respective Groups (categories) once imported.
The Palm Desktop vCard exports the Category fields as:
X-Palm-Category1:Family
X-Palm-Category2:Business
For your information, Address Book exports groups as:
CATEGORIES:Family,Business
I performed the following:
1. Exported all contacts from Palm using vCard.
2. Imported the vCard data into Address Book.
3. Created a Group called "Family"
4. Created a "Smart Group"; Edit > Edit Smart Group > 'Note' 'contains' 'X-Palm-Category1:Family'
5. Selected all the contacts now in the Smart Group and added (drag and drop) them to the Group called "Family"
6. Repeated steps 3, 4, and 5 for each Category name (Family, Friends, Business, Work, etc.)
Request for help:
If you know a better solution to importing the category information into Address Book, please respond!
If you know how to tell, looking at a card, what Groups it is a member of, please respond and let me know how.
Thanks, Karl
iMac 24, Mac OS X (10.5.6)