Importing Windows Outlook Contacts Into Address Book

Part of the migration process is to move all the Outlook Contacts and Calendar entries into the Mac. I targeted the Address Book and iCal to begin with. It took me a while but the easiest way I settled with is to install Thunderbird on the Windows PC, import Outlook contacts into Thunderbird, then export it out again as LDIF, then import that into Address Book. A bit roundabout.

I started off exporting the Outlook Contacts into CSV then importing that into Address Book. But after doing that I found that the field mapping is not automatic and it was so tedious doing the mapping, even after all that mapping work it turned out that the "" delimiters just made a mess of the address book. I gave up on this after a while and looked for other possibilities which is when I found the commonality of LDIF support between Address Book and Outlook Contacts.

So, in summary:

- In Windows PC, start up Thunderbird
a) Tools -> Import -> Address Book -> Outlook
b) Tools -> Address Book (this starts up the Thunderbird Address Book application)

- In the Thunderbird Address Book application
a) Tools -> Export -> LDIF
b) Specify the export file name

- Transfer the exported address book to the Mac. Start up Address Book
a) File -> Import -> LDIF (select the imported LDIF address book file)

Sit back and enjoy!