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How do I transfer Palm contacts to Address Book?

Dave, I'm completely clueless when it comes to programming, so I have a question that hopefully has an easy answer. Can I get the contacts in Palm's software into the Mac OS X Address Book without too much difficulty?

Dave's Answer:

You can indeed. Here are the exact steps you need to go through:

First off, launch your Palm desktop application, then from the File menu choose Export. You'll get a window that looks like this:

As you can see, I've chosen Addresses as the module, and vCard as the format.

Now click on the "Export" button and you'll have a new file on your desktop. That's all we need Palm Desktop for, so you can quit it if you want.

Next, it's time to launch Address Book. Choose File --> Import --> vCards and select your newly created data file in the window:

That's basically it. Address Book will import all your contacts and you'll be good to go!

Hope that helps you out.

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Comments

Dave,

I have tried doing this a million times, and every time, Palm Desktop crashes when I try to export my address book in vcf format. I would really prefer to import them into Address Book as vcfs, b/c of some nice importing features and accuracy of labels that gets lost with the tab-return format. How can I get these addresses exported without PD crashing over and over? Sometimes I can drag a single (or even a few) address(es) directly to the desktop to make a vcf of them (each one is created individually this way), but again, half the time, it crashes and Finder gets lost in a long period of thinking unless I relaunch.

Can you help me?

This has happened with more than one install of Palm Desktop, on more than one machine, running everything from 10.2 or so to Tiger.

Thanks,
bob

Posted by: Bob at August 10, 2005 6:09 PM

I just wanted to respond to Bob's comment from August 10. I too was having problems exporting my contacts from Palm Desktop to Address Book; everytime I tried to export the contacts, Palm Desktop would crash.

The solution? Make sure you're running the most recent version of Palm Desktop (4.2.1). Launch it and Address Book at the same time. Then, select all of the addresses in Palm Desktop, and drag and drop them into Address Book. They should import perfectly!

Hope this helps you (and anyone else who encounters this issue).

Posted by: JT at October 9, 2005 6:09 PM

I was trying to figure out how to export palm contacts from mac 10.3 and I came across this page. Just saying hi! btw you can also transfer as a text file into address book.

Posted by: Donovan Dale at January 31, 2007 3:17 PM

Awesome job. I had actually tried doing that before but it must have been incompatible with older versions of both applications.

What I'd like to know though, is there a way of "synching" them? I know I can drag them from Palm to Mac Address and it will give me the option of what to do on the duplicates, but, can I go the other way? Maybe an AppleScript or even and Automator process?

Posted by: Angelo Mileto at February 21, 2007 3:45 PM

More advanced Palm-Import-To-Addressbook question:

I have made up several custom fields in Palm Desktop, which, when using the normal vCard export/import method, all get written to the Notes field in Addressbook.

Is there any way I can tell the Import which Custom Field in the Palm database to link to which Custom Field in Addressbook?

Posted by: Irma at March 22, 2007 5:48 PM

I have old contacts (from a Palm V PDA) that I can open running Mac classic/9 on my new Mac. When I tried to export them I am not given the vCard option. I'm give 2 "delimiters" to choose from when I export: tab & return OR Palm Desktop. I've tried both, and then attempted to import those files to the OSX address book. To no avail. Can't just drag and drop them either. Any advice??

Posted by: Randy at July 5, 2007 1:23 PM

Hi, I know Palm Desktop 4.1 SP3, 4.1.4 dat file formats. I've developed VC++, c# classes for working with Palm Desktop *.dat files: address book , memo, todo, datebook.
Regards.

Posted by: win32nipuh at November 18, 2007 5:12 AM

How do you transfer palm date book info to iphone... ical?

Posted by: Audrey at December 27, 2007 10:17 PM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!