Exporting from MS Works to Address Book

Exporting form other programs such as Filemaker is done in a similar way.

The “Text to Address Book” utility program  will convert files exported from most data base programs, some spread sheet programs and some other Phone Book programs.

As it is anticipated that you will only use this program once when moving your list of names and addresses from a previous program to Address Book, I didn’t spend much time on the user interface. Maybe one day I’ll fix it up.

From MS Work’s File menu, select “Save As...”. Type in a file name such as “Export from Works.”  Click the “Export” radio button and then the “Save” button.

Open the “Text to Address Book” program and set the Record delimiter to “CR” and the field delimiter to “Tab”  Click OK.

Some programs other than MS Works have odd characters embedded in the text. These can be removed by entering them in the “Remove All of These” box.

Click “OK” to continue.

From the next dialog, locate the “Export from Works” file and open it. 

This window allows you to set which of your input fileds at the right side go into the Address Book fields and lines at the top of the matrix of buttons.

Click the “FWD” button to find a record with all or most all fields filled, preferable with a persons first and last names rather than a company name.

Click on the matrix buttons to assign the input fields to the Address Book fields and lines. The buttons will cancel if clicked again.  

Your input fields are probably in a different order and you may not have as many in which case there will be less rows of buttons.

If your input data has more than address fields then simply set two buttons to place two of the input feilds into one of Address Book's lines.

The “- - -  no data  - - -” simply means that this input field was empty.

To quit the program from this window, hit the “Backup” button then quit from the delimiter dialog. 

Click the “Check” button to see the record displayed as it will be in Address Book.  

Set check boxes  "Flip Name" and "Doe. John" to make the name correct for Address Book. (Last name, a period, first name)

Verify that the other fields are OK and return to the Set Up window. You may wish to go “Fwd” or “Rev” to check other fields.

Click “Convert” and quit when it's done.

You can open this new list in Address Book or Merge it into an existing list.  

Any records wish had an empty name field will now have “A name missing” inserted in the name field.  This sorts them all together at the top of the list in the Index window where you can double click to edit as required.