Groups and Categories

[Hal]

My wife created an Address Book group in Entourage 2004, but the members of
the group are not individually categorized.

Is there a procedure or script that will take all of the members of a group
and assign them to a category?

Hal

 

[Diane Ross]

My wife created an Address Book group in Entourage 2004, but the members of
the group are not individually categorized.

I Entourage 2008 just tried using the Categories icon to add a category to a
group member that was not in my Address Book. It appeared to add a category
when checking the category list with the contact selected, but when I added
that contact to my Address Book there was no category selected.

Is there a procedure or script that will take all of the members of a group
and assign them to a category?
Not that I am aware of.

I highly suggest you make sure each group member is in your Address Book.
Assign it to a category named group: xxx. This way you can sort by category
to easily manage your groups. By using the naming convention of "Group:
xxx", this will sort all groups together.

Example:
Group:work
Group:family
Group:soccer

You can have more than one category per contact.

Entourage does not export groups and using the category method you can
export by category and get a tab delimited file.

To add the members of a group that are not in your Address Book (you can
tell they have a blue dot) just drag them to your Address Book. Sort by
Category "none." I highly suggest each contact in your Address Book be
assigned a category. It's easy to command-select to add multiple addresses
to a group at a time.

When you add the group member to the Address Book, it will then show with
the little man icon instead of the blue dot.

I just recovered an Entourage X Identity with thousands of group contacts
that had not been entered in the Address Book and it took many hours to
recreate the data. Dragging the groups to the desktop created one big long
email address with all contacts in the one. It was a mess.

 

[Kevin-or-Ash]

I just want to get my correctly categorized contacts in Entourage
exported to Address Book.

It did everything except that, but "that" is crucial, and the
documentation for the scripts I've found doesn't mention if that
specific need is met.

Thanks all!

 

[Barry Wainwright]

I just want to get my correctly categorized contacts in Entourage
exported to Address Book.

It did everything except that, but "that" is crucial, and the
documentation for the scripts I've found doesn't mention if that
specific need is met.

Thanks all!

I don't know of any such script, but one could be written fairly easily
- I'll take a look at it later today when I have some free time.

 

[Kevin-or-Ash]

Haven't heard from the Master Script Writer - Barry, have you come up
with something?

Here are the things I still need scripts to do; forgive me, but I'm
posting this in a few places.

Problems:

I need:

a) to re-export/merge Contacts such that categorized/grouped are
preserved.

b) Entourage's notes, such that they will be correctly titled, and in
a useful place on the iPhone (I have about 400 notes), and again need
them categorized.

c) My Entourage filters/rules to Apple's Mail.

d) The large mailing lists (groups) I had in Entourage also of course
exported to Apple's Mail's groups.

Thanks for considering this request, though I don't understand why I'm
not one of thousands asking it.

km

 

[Diane Ross]

Barry is on vacation. You also must realize that it takes quite a bit of
time to write a script they get paid nothing to do this. If you are in a
hurry, I can recommend people that do this for a fee.

 

[Kevin-or-Ash]

Hey Diane,

The question from the get-go was if Barry's product can do these
things.

I have downloaded it and read through the documents: these questions
are unaddressed.

I can't believe I'm the only person dumping Entourage for the all-Mac
platform, though it is unpolitic perhaps say that, as most Entourage
users who emigrate away will have these issues.

Thanks again,
km

 

[Diane Ross]

The question from the get-go was if Barry's product can do these
things.

Weren't the scripts the Export-Import ones? Those are Paul Berkowitz and
he's the one you should contact. He gives his email with his scripts. Check
the readme.

I can't believe I'm the only person dumping Entourage for the all-Mac
platform, though it is unpolitic perhaps say that, as most Entourage
users who emigrate away will have these issues.

Yes, this area needs more help. I know when MVPs are asked to list, cross
platform is one of our top requests. You are not alone in wanting an easier
way to move from a PC to a Mac.

Once you try out Mail, you might reconsider.

 

[Kevin-or-Ash]

Hi,

I did indeed write Paul, but haven't heard back.

I'm not moving from a PC. I'm a 22 year Mac user, and a 20 year MS
products user who was tired of Entourage 2004's issues, and none-too-
pleased with the update (6 years later) still not being as good as it
might be.

We'll see if Mail cuts it.

Thanks again,
km

 

[Kevin-or-Ash]

Hi,

I did indeed write Paul, but haven't heard back.

I'm not moving from a PC. I'm a 22 year Mac user, and a 20 year MS
products user who was tired of Entourage 2004's issues, and none-too-
pleased with the update (6 years later) still not being as good as it
might be.

We'll see if Mail cuts it.

Thanks again,
km

Thus, my needs more clearly articulated.

: )


a) Can Paul's scripts (or anyone's!) re-export/merge Contacts such
that
categorized/grouped are preserved? This is of great importance.

b) Will it export Entourage's notes, and will they be
correctly titled, and in a useful place on the iPhone? (I have about
400 notes), again categorized?

c) Any way to export my Entourage filters/rules to Apple's Mail?

d) Any way to export the large mailing lists (groups) I had in
Entourage to Apple's Mail?

Thanks,
km

 

[Diane Ross]

:

Did you try the demo of Paul's scripts?

a) Can Paul's scripts (or anyone's!) re-export/merge Contacts such
that
categorized/grouped are preserved? This is of great importance.

I believe this is possible.

b) Will it export Entourage's notes, and will they be
correctly titled, and in a useful place on the iPhone? (I have about
400 notes), again categorized?

I don't have an iphone so I could say.

c) Any way to export my Entourage filters/rules to Apple's Mail?

Doubtful. Take screenshots

d) Any way to export the large mailing lists (groups) I had in
Entourage to Apple's Mail?

Yes, use a tab delimited file.

Import Export Contacts
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/import_export/contacts.html#group>

I'm sorry that Paul has not returned your questions, but it's up to
individual authors to support their scripts. I do know Paul's job has left
him with little time to volunteer his support lately.

 

[Kevin-or-Ash]

Hey Diane,

Thank you for the information about exporting groups! A byzantine work-
around if I've ever seen one, but I'll take it!

Thanks Again,
k

 

[Diane Ross]

Thank you for the information about exporting groups! A byzantine work-
around if I've ever seen one, but I'll take it!

Sometimes you have to think out of the box.

For anyone following this thread....

I'm a firm believer in saving contacts as tab delimited file, plus entering
all contacts in a group to the Address Book and assign the group category to
them. If you ever run into database problems and find you have hundreds of
contacts in groups that you can't export, you'll wish you had.

Easiest way: File --> Export, Select "Contacts as a list (tab delimited
file.)"

You can open a tab delimited file in any text editor or Excel to manage your
data.

Of course automating this is even better. In Entourage 2008 you can use the
Automator file, "Export Entourage Contacts". Save the workflow as an iCal
plugin. In iCal set the time and recurrence to run. I save contacts weekly.

 

[Kevin-or-Ash]

Hi Diane,

Of course, Entourage 2004 Notes don't export - one of the many reasons
I posted here.

I've figured out a work-around. It took me 30 hours of reading,
thinking, and experimenting to get all of my data out of Entourage in
a useful fashion.

It will take the next person about 20 minutes with my instructions.

Willing to share - but as nobody at MS, MarkSpace, or these groups
knew, and I figured it out, I need to get paid for it.

Cheers,
k

 

[Maryam Mohit]

I have a similar issue, using entourage 2008.

I need to export one category of contacts so that I can print envelopes for
our holiday card.

I tried this workaround:
Export a group as a tab delimited file:

Exporting Entourage contacts as a tab delimited file gets all contacts. If
you want to export a specific group, you can export as an Entourage archive
(.rge).This file can only be used by Entourage. To export as a tab delimited
file, use this workaround:

Export as an .rge file. Select the category for that group and export that
category only. THEN create a new Identity in Entourage and import the .rge
file. NOW you can export it as a tab delimited file.

But when I tired it, I got the error message that "There are no selected
items on this category"

Are my contacts somehow not located in "local contacts"?

I'm in a time crunch to get these cards out.

I tried exporting to a .txt file but since categories don't export, I cant
just export to Excel and then sort for the category I need.

I' so appreciate any help!

 

[Diane Ross]

Are my contacts somehow not located in "local contacts"?

If they are just in a Group, they are not in your Address Book. Drag them to
the Address Book and assign a category to them. I like to name groups like
this:

Group: holiday
Group: family
Group: soccer