Moving addresses into Lotus Notes
by Volker Weber
I have long given up on syncing a Notes client with all kinds of PDA devices. I can't recall how often I had to weed out duplicates and fix repeating dates. Today I am keeping this data in tools that sync OK and that let me move data in and out via standard formats like vCard 3.0 or vCal/iCal.
But I would like to have at least all mail addresses also in a names.nsf. That does not seem to be so easy. Notes lets me import a vCard file, but only one card at a time. How useful is that if you need to import 800 addresses?
Suggestions?
Comments
I'm using the Notes vCard Support with R5 to handle vCards also with more than one contact in it. If you can create such files with the other application, it's no problem to import them.
Thanks, Markus. Found that already. However
xecute the install file, vCard_Processor_207.exe
is not an option on a Mac. :-)
How about Lipsync from Kissworks (http://www.kissworks.com/) which would allow you to skip the whole vCard thing ? Don't know if it's any good though as I'm not using it (rather synching my names.nsf through XTNDConnect with a pocketpc which in turn is synched through PocketMac with my address book on the Mac),
Hm, for me it works to export my addresses to one single file which can be imported directly to 'names.nsf' (Notes 6.5 on Mac). Notes shows a dialog for deciding whether all or only selected should be imported. Unfortunately, special characters are not maintained.
Oliver, that does not work for me. I open names.nsf, select File/Import, then vCard and the file that I exported from Address Book. The file select dialog simply returns, without any error message. If the export file contains only one address, I get a form which show the import result and wants a confirmation.
Jef, yes, I will take a look at Lipsync if Seth lets me have one.
Please try Address Book Preferences - vCard - vCard Format 2.1
Thanks, Oliver. I have a fix now, including your charset issues. With special characters you mean all characters that He did not put on the American keyboard.
Address Book lets you select a charset when exporting to VCF. And then ignores it. It will always be Latin-1. Notes however ignores the charset as well, since it just assumes Mac Roman, even if the files says otherwise.
Here is the fix: Export as vCard 2.1, use SubEthaEdit to open this file. Do an Edit/File Format and select Western (Windows Latin-1), Reinterpret. Then do an Edit File Format again and select Wester (Mac OS Roman), Recode. Save the file and import into Notes.
And then set the preferences in Address Book back to vCard 3.0.
Summary: Notes lets you export 2.1 (with native or UTF-8 encoding). It lets you import 2.1 and 3.0, if there is only one card in the import file. You need to have a 2.1 file for a bulk import, and that file has to be in Mac OS Roman char set.
You could try to concenate the 800 files into one and import that one:
cat *.vcf >> all.vcf
As far as I remember the duplicate issue arises, because PDAs are just that: "Personal" assistants and not "Enterprise" ones (server-based). PDA syncs with syncdatabase on PC/Mac which syncs with PIM (Notes/Outlook...). Switch to another computer or reinstall it and it recreates a syncdatabase and thereby assumes it's a first synchronisation. Notes makes normal synchronisation even more complicated, because one needs to replicate PAB with server and the other Notes clients. Best remedy: sync directly with a server or a webservice.
Not addressing the enterprise sync issue is one of the reasons why PDAs have an estimated cost of more than 3.000 EUR per device per year in companies. Nowadays most PDAs are tools for managers, not managed tools.
Doesn't really help you, Volker, I know. I just needed to get this of my chest.
Volker, if you asked real nice, I might be willing to take my vCard processing code out of the OpenNTF Mail Template and turn it into an importer for you. The vCard format is pretty straight forward.
Peter, they are all in one file.
Nathan, thanks. But as you can see here there is a workaround. I just find it interesting that Notes bombs with something as simple as a vCard 3 format and keeps ignoring the codepage specified in the vCard 2.1 format. I wonder whether anybody has ever tested this code.
Syncing mobile devices is a rather complicated process and turns out to be just another word for replication. But unlike Notes PDAs usually don't hold the neccessary time stamps, delition stubs and can't merge fields. PDA export formats usually hold much less information, making the process much more complicated and prone to errors.
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