Export Multiple Contacts from Address Book

· by · Tips

Itis easy to export contacts from Appleis Address Book application: Just click and drag. Exporting multiple contacts is just as easy. Simply select all of the contacts you want to export, and drag them to your desktop. The only problem is that Address Book exports all of the contacts as a single file that some applications have a hard time importing.


Drag contacts from Address Book to export them.

You can work around the single-file export issue by holding down the Option key when you drag the contacts from Address Book to your Desktop. Instead of creating a single vCard file with all of the contacts, Address Book will create individual vCard files for each contact.


Option-drag multiple contacts to export them as individual files.

This is an easy way to give contacts to Microsoft Entourage users. While Entourage can import the vCard format without any hassle, it will only import the first contact from a multi-contact file. Give an Entourage user a group of vCards, and they all import fine.

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Jeff Gamet

Jeff Gamet

Jeff is the Mac Observer's Managing Editor, and co-host of the Apple Context Machine podcast. He is the author of "The Designer's Guide to Mac OS X" from Peachpit Press, and writes for several design-related publications. Jeff has presented at events such as Macworld Expo, the RSA Conference, and the Mac Computer Expo. In all his spare time, he also co-hosts the We Have Communicators podcast, and makes guest appearances on several other podcasts, too. Jeff dreams in HD.

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