Can I copy contacts from my Outlook Express address book, which is on my desktop PC running Windows XP, to Evolution Mail on my netbook running Linux Ubuntu?
Frank Shaw
In theory, all you have to do is go to the Windows address book, click File, select Export, and save it as a csv (comma separated values) file. Any email program should be able to import it, so it's worth trying with your version of Evolution Mail. Of course, you should always back up your current Evolution data first in case something goes wrong. Historically, importing .csv files does seem to have caused Evolution users some pain, and in 2007, someone in the Ubuntu Forums explained a workaround: import it into Thunderbird, then export it in LDIF data interchange format and import that. In which case, it might be worth exporting your Windows Addressbook data in LDIF instead of, or as well as, .csv.
Another workaround is to convert a .csv file into the vCard electronic business card format using csv2vcard software. vCard is an industry standard and the best format for storing addressbook data. Unfortunately, the Windows Addressbook will only export one contact entry to vCard at a time.
