View source for Migrating Apple's AddressBook data to Linux

This article will explain how to export contacts from Mac OS X Address Book, and import them under Linux.


== Exporting as vCard 3.0 format ==

On the Mac, you can only export in vCard format. The trick resides in the fact that the exported file is encoded in UTF-16, and apparently *NOT* on the encoding you specify in the Preferences (this is probably a bug). 

So it is essential to reencode the exported file, in UTF-8.

Then, you can import this file with KAddressBook (the import will only work if the file is encoded in UTF-8; it will fail if you use the original file in UTF-16).

Once you have your data in KAddressBook, you can reexport it from there into various formats (for example if you want to use Mozilla's Address Book).