I have a large contact list that I want to integrate with Evolution address book. I'd prefer to avoid 40K clicks to fill the new contact form so I thought I would

• create a data file in "address book" format
• "connect" this data file to Evolution as an extra "address book"

Thanks,
~~~ 0;-Dan

Hi -

It sounds like you're probably looking for "VCard format":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks (oops, I need to click the "thanks" button) for the vcard link. I saw that the addressbook.db file contained vcards, but there was also loads of other non-vcard binary as a header and scattered in the file. Can you tell me what this binary is all about?

~~~ 0;-Dan

So, your "address book" appears to be in some sort of database format.
Q: Which database application created this .db file?

You need to use that database application to extract only the information you require (eg only the vcard parts) and save that to a text file. You should then be able to import that file into evolution. Check evolution's Import feature for the formats it accepts (File - Import ... Import a single file .. File Type).
Without telling us what the database application that created this file is, and how it was originally set up, I don't think we can help much more at the moment.
"Binary stuff"* really doesn't belong in an address book, unless perhaps it relates pictures of people, (and even then, I'd argue that they don't belong in the address book).

* But it might belong in a .db file and be relevant ( checksums, indexes, access-rights ... ) to the database application that created the file in the first place.

Hi -

"addressbook.db" is a BerkeleyDb database that stores information (including VCard records) for Evolution:

'Hope that helps .. PSM

1 members found this post helpful.

This is tres useful!! I have files of vcards and can create new files of vcards starting with spreadsheet contact data.

Are utilities part of Evolution's package but that do not appear internal to the email reader program? Do I need the BerkeleyDB package for "import" or "convert" utilities? (I found db4.6-util and db4.7-util with Synaptic.)

Why do I feel like I'm inventing new features when this operation seems to be commonplace need.

~~~ 0;-Dan

Thank you for that information
In that case, why doesn't he just import it into evolution? It should understand the database structure. No?

[Off topic] I am interested in this thread, because I hate KDE4, so moved to gnome, and evolution as my email client (as of two days ago). I am working out how to move my many MB of mail from kmail (much-loved KDE3.x) to evolution [Legal-related mails - I need to keep it for a bit longer].

I have never used evolution before, but so far, so good, although it takes time to move my emails from kmail: Convert MDir to MBox, Export, Import, reindex... wait. But it seems to be working
[/Off topic]

I have contact data in a wide variety of formats -- spreadsheets,
delimited files, document files, text files, vcards, files-of-vcards, and so on.

I want to generate Evolution address book files from whatever I have.
Thus my request for the Evolution file format. Armed with the required file format, I can read-from what I have and write-to that format. Now that I know about BerkeleyDB, there may be existing utils for what I want to accomplish.

I've mostly decided that I want:

• create address-book file
• read vcard
• insert into address-book
• close address-book file

Contacts stored as vcards have their own value so I'll likely move
my raw data into vcards from whatever I already have. I might
also use some "contact manager" (win-dose folks use ACT! or similar).
The web is covered up with vcard<-->xls utilities. I have not settled on which I'll use, but discussion of that is also fair game here.

Cheers,
~~~ 0;-Dan

Hi, SaintDanBert -

ALSO:

Your sig. I like it!

The quote is by John Adams (the Founding Father, not the composer ):

I searched on BerkeleyDb and I do not think you want to write a utility to create this file from scratch, or modify it ( the tools already exist, they are "BerkeleyDb" which is incorporated into evolution ).

Then please try this:

Open evolution.
The file is created at /home/username/.evolution/addressbook/local/system/addressbook.db
if it does not already exist.
Open evolution
File - Import ... Import a single file .. Set the File Type to vcard
Set the filename to the /path/to/your/vcard/file
Forward.
The vcard file is imported into your addressbook.db and added to the existing addresses.
Close evolution

If you have address data in other formats, evolution can either import them directly ( eg MS Outlook Personal Folders, *.pst ) or you can use your own utilities to convert them to vcard, CSV or some other format that evolution will handle.

When I do this, the resulting contact data in Evolution is not useful.
The import presumes details about the delimited file being imported
and stuffs contents where they don't belong. You get no warning from Evolution that the data did not line up well or properly. On one hand it makes sense that you would export contact data to CSV from one application and import that data into Evolution. Other applications present a column of source fields and target fields and enable end-user direction of which source data goes into which fields. It is this matching -- random spreadsheet data to data evolution will digest -- that I cannot find.

Let me try a different approach:
Does anyone have a mySQL or similar database schema for a reasonably complete V-Card?

I know that I could pick fields from a spreadsheet (CSV) to load into mySQL and from there write a V-Card "report."

Bulk load of contact data into Evolution should not be this hard.
~~~ 0;-Dan

The description for 'openoffice.org-evolution' in the synaptic package manager reads:

"This package allows OpenOffice.org to access Evolution address books.
You need to install evolution separately."

I installed this package and still can't figure out how to use it. Because OpenOffice database is installed with this option (if it's isn't already), you would think you could use their database. I haven't found a way.

Hope this helps.

You can dump the content of the berkeley db file with the dbdump utility
dbdump addressbook.db -p > /home/username/dbdump