Importing Contacts from Excel to Thunderbird

kenlanderson · 11th June 2009

I had some trouble importing contacts from Excel to Thunderbird using the instructions in:
http://buffy.eecs.berkeley.edu/ACG/list-import.html

I followed the exact steps and it worked for importing the email addresses but the names would not show up in the email when using the created list. The names were in the Address Book and the List but when I would send an email, only the email address would be there but not the contents of the name field, e.g., Cinder Ella from the above url example.

In the dialog window for importing the .csv file, I tried separate tests in associating the name field in .csc file with First Name, Last Name, Display Name but none worked to get the name field into the email that I sent. I am using Excel 2003 with SP3 and Thunderbird is current (version 2.0.0.21). When saving the Excel file to file type of .csv, I responded to the questions to get the file saved and the data looked fine. It seems that there must be a missing control character for the name field in the created Address Book & List so Thunderbird will not bring in the Name field into the email being sent.

Thank you for your help,
Ken

**Westside** · 11th June 2009

It is possible, because what you described has happened with Address Books from more compatible programs than Excel (which I don't have). I will see what Open Office which handles Excel documents may do.
Typically, I never paid attention if there was a name, but on a quick examination, I found some addresses with as many as four entries. e-mail address only, name in all capitals, and all lower case, and some abbreviations. Time to clean up the mess. It may not be TB mishandling, but rather the other programs, though.

**TonyT** · 12th June 2009

1. open Thunderbird > Address Book > Export > save the address book as csv instead of ldif.
2. open the csv in Notepad.
3. open the excel csv in Notepad too.
4. compare the two.
5. use Notepad Find & Replace to quickly correct the excel csv file to use the same formatting as the TB csv file.

For example, you may need dowuble quotes around entries.

Tip, you can rearrange the excel colums to match the order of TB columns, and you can rename the column headings too.

kenlanderson · 12th June 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by TonyT

1. open Thunderbird > Address Book > Export > save the address book as csv instead of ldif.
2. open the csv in Notepad.
3. open the excel csv in Notepad too.
4. compare the two.
5. use Notepad Find & Replace to quickly correct the excel csv file to use the same formatting as the TB csv file.

For example, you may need dowuble quotes around entries.

Tip, you can rearrange the excel colums to match the order of TB columns, and you can rename the column headings too.

Great! Works like a charm. Step 1 was most important. I also followed the "Tip" of matching excel columns to the order of TB columns to reduce confusion.
Thank you so much,
Ken

**TonyT** · 13th June 2009

Great! Glad you sorted it all out.
I do this often and recently had to create several very large (9,000+ entries) outlook contacts lists from Excel spreadsheets. (used in various email programs)