Drag and drop from Contacts into Numbers not working - any solutions?

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Level 1

8 points

Drag and drop from Contacts into Numbers not working - any solutions?

I'm trying to get my Contacts into a Numbers spreadsheet. According to the Help files, I should be able to select the Contacts and simply drag them into a Numbers sheet (after deleting the default Table). I've tried this many times over and the drag and drop feature doesn't seem to be working. I can select the contacts and drag them over, but the little contact card remains red when I drag it into Numbers and never turns green to allow me to drop into Numbers. It's the same whether I'm trying to drag one contact or many contacts at the same time. I've also tried exporting a vcard and then dragging that file from my desktop into Numbers, but that doesn't work either. I've tried quitting and reopening both applications, as well as restarting my computer. I'm running OSX 10.8.3 and have installed all new software updates, so I'm just at a loss for what to try next.

Does anyone have any solutions for this problem, or an alternative way to get my Contacts into a Numbers file?

Many thanks in advance!

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3), 1.83ghz

Posted on Mar 30, 2013 6:39 AM

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Answer 1

poogleypie Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 30, 2013 6:46 AM in response to poogleypie

I was able to find the answer on this thread from Jerry https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4836016?tstart=0

Apparently it's a personal privacy setting that I never knew about.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,252 points

Mar 30, 2013 7:00 AM in response to poogleypie

When I tried, it put up a dialog asking me if I wanted to allow Numbers access to my Contacts. Is it possible you tried this and dis-allowed it access?

You might check, anyway. Open Security & Privacy System Prefs, select Privacy tab, and select Contacts from the list of items. Is Numbers listed and is it checked?

Another way to get the contact information into the clipboard is to create an Automator workflow like this:

Open Automator and select Workflow from the options presented.

Drag in the above actions and set the properties as you like. For the Get Contact Information action, you must set the export format to Spreadsheet (tabs).

For the new Text File action, I had to set the Encoding to Unicode (UTF-8) or it would fail.

Select all the contacts you want and then click the Run button in Automator. You can then open the text file with Numbers.

If you envision doing this often, start with an application instead of a Workflow and save it somewhere. Then, you can select your contacts and double-click the Application to export the contacts each time.

The benefit of this method is that you can select all the fields you want to include (at least more than is provided in Drag and Drop).

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