"Apple's Address Book application is ... not [good] at sharing ... information with most other app[lications] ..."

That seems an unnecessarily derogatory comment. It is also incorrect. Address Book currently sychronizes with .Mac, Exchange, Google, and Yahoo. (Take a look at the Preferences window.)

It also exports to vCards which are *the* standard from the Internet Mail Consortium for personal data exchange. This is *the* standard for this purpose:

http://www.imc.org/pdi/

If someone has an application that doesn't support the interchange standards, then that's the problem of that application, not Address Book which *does*.

Frankly, the real answer would be to use better software on the other operating system you're moving the data to.

I think you're missing the part where Address Book DOESN'T export to CSV. Anyone who has tried to export their entire book and import it into another application knows how strange it is that Apple didn't include this basic function. It's a major pain to create vCards for every entry in a book and then import them one at a time. This is a great step forward, and it only highlights that which is strangely lacking. Thus, it is not false, and it is appropriately derogatory, though I think "derogatory" is an overreaction.

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Anonymous wrote:
"Apple's Address Book application is ... not [good] at sharing ... information with most other app[lications] ..."

That seems an unnecessarily derogatory comment. It is also incorrect. Address Book currently sychronizes with .Mac, Exchange, Google, and Yahoo. (Take a look at the Preferences window.)

It also exports to vCards which are *the* standard from the Internet Mail Consortium for personal data exchange. This is *the* standard for this purpose:

http://www.imc.org/pdi/

If someone has an application that doesn't support the interchange standards, then that's the problem of that application, not Address Book which *does*.

Frankly, the real answer would be to use better software on the other operating system you're moving the data to.

Address Book does export to a handful of applications, and yes, it does support the vCard standard. That doesn't, however, mean its export options play well with a wide range of applications. For that you still need CSV export, and that's where Address Book clearly falls short -- especially since not everyone is in a position to dictate which applications they use for specific tasks.

For example, moving Address Book data into a spreadsheet or custom database is much easer if you can first create a CSV file.

That shortcoming isn't enough to make me want to switch to a different contact manager since Address Book is meeting most of my needs, but it is still a shortcoming, and I think it's great that developers like Antonio Lore have stepped up to the plate and addressed that issue.

Jeff

Although the freeware utility mentioned is a fine solution for CSV export, I agree with the first post--this would not be necessary if other applications supported modern standards, in this case, the vCard format.

BTW, in addition to the things the first post mentioned, you should be aware that Address Book's data is maintained in a database accessible system-wide by any application that wishes to do so. Sharing is thus "live" in real time.

It's time for other applications to catch up.

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Lavode wrote:
I think you're missing the part where Address Book DOESN'T export to CSV. Anyone who has tried to export their entire book and import it into another application knows how strange it is that Apple didn't include this basic function. It's a major pain to create vCards for every entry in a book and then import them one at a time. This is a great step forward, and it only highlights that which is strangely lacking. Thus, it is not false, and it is appropriately derogatory, though I think "derogatory" is an overreaction.

You can export an entire group of contacts--or all of them--to one vCard. Just highlight them and choose export. Try it.