Export Outlook addresses (to Linux/Mac)

Took me several steps to get outlook addressbook ready for Thunderbird and OS X Addressbook.

1) Export CSV - e.g. to all.csv

2) Convert to utf (thanks): iconv -f ISO8859-1 -t utf-8 -o all-utf.csv all.CSV

3) Use openoffice to change the email display names into a regular first name surname
I used this formula: =CONCATENATE(B2;" ";D2) on each row

4) Use kaddressbook to import csv file (Thunderbird has an outlook import wizard in its windows version,but it does not catch very much information).

I only had to tweak the outlook template a little to get it to import all the email addresses.  By default it uses the "email display name" field as as the "display name" - hence the reason for step 3.

5) Export as ldif

6) Import ldif into Thunderbird.

An alternative is to use a Yahoo! mail account.

Tags: outlook, thunderbird, address book