import Outlook Contacts To Thunderbird Address Book

[tbsolutions]

I have successfully exported my Outlook contacts as a CSV.

However, when imported to Thunderbird, and the contact list is opened, the display name ("name") shows as the part of the email address before the @ symbol. For example, "abc" for abc@gmail.com, and not the recorded first and last name. When I click on any single contact in the list (to open the "edit" dialog box), the first and last name do show in their correct fields, as is the email address, but the "display" field is blank.

Because the display name shows correctly within Outlook, I assume this is a compatibility issue. I have tried various selections in TB field mapping, but cannot get the actual "name" to show in the contact list, i.e as first and last name.

I have tried everything I can think of. Can someone please offer a solution that will make the field mapping work?

[tanstaafl]

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Import_addres ... _text_file

If that doesn't help then I suggest you manually create a contact in Thunderbird and export that address book as a .csv file. Then use a spreadsheet to compare the formatting of the outlook and Thunderbird .csv files.

[Gone Postal]

If you have First Name and Last Name fields showing correctly then you can probably edit the csv to update things. You could open the csv in something like Excel or Open Office and insert a formula (of the generic format =First Name&" "&Last Name) in the Display Name field which would populate the column in the csv. Hopefully that would carry over to the Thunderbird import and should only be a couple of minutes work to set up.

[tbsolutions]

Thank you for your advice. In Outlook, the field order when viewed in Excel is: First Name, Last Name, Email, Display Name. In Thunderbird it is First Name, Last Name, Display Name and Email. IOW the later two are reversed.

Can you please explain to someone with no experience in spread sheets how and where I can make the necessary change to the latter two fields?

[DanRaisch]

Open the CSV file in a spreadsheet program. Add/insert a new column between Last Name and Email columns. Highlight the contents of the column Display Name and drag and drop it into that new column. When that is successfully done, delete the column Display Name and then add the name "Display Name" to that recently created column. Save the file and try the import again.

[tbsolutions]

After comparing the exported CSV's from Outlook and Thunderbird in Exel, it was just a matter of matching the field names, as was suggested by tanstaafl.

I then deleted all fields from the right hand box in Outlook's field mapper and created new fields as follows: First Name same, Last Name same, Name to Display Name, E-mail Address to Primary Email.