vCard export trick

[dysong3]

Has anybody already worked on a means of exporting data from FMPro files so that it is easily imported into applications using vCards such as apple's Address Book ? If so I would be interested in seeing how it's done.

[Vaughan]

This would be ideal for XML export. Unfortunately that's as much as I know about XML Export!

[cjaeger]

there is an xml example in the XSLT library at http://www.filemaker.com/xml/

However, it should be easy enough to look at the specs or a sample vcard file, then make a concenated field with the info ("cn:" & name & ....). The advantage of the XML solution is that it also gets foreign charsets & umlauts right.

But, if you are just using it for address book, there are some AppleScripts for importing Adresses from Outlook Expres or tab delimited files in your script menu.

[JerrySalem]

Chrisitan,

thanks for the pointer to the XML vcard export! it was really helpfull.

Does anyone have a good shell to do the same in reverse?

How do I import a vcard?

TIA

Jerry

[dysong3]

Yes thanks also for the pointer on XML. I even found a style sheet template for exporting data that can then be imported into address book. The only problem is it doesn't include a field for fax numbers and my only reason for wanting to do this it that Faxstf uses the address book for sending faxes. So if anyone can tell just how to include a fax field in this XML template I will be thrilled.

[dysong3]

I am answering my own question, but I managed to find a little utility that does exactly what I need it to do. It can be found at the following address

http://www.carbon6dev.com/software/

It converts vCards to and from several formats including Filemaker.