Importing email contacts into the Opera Mail client seems virtually impossible !

Importing email contacts into the Opera Mail client seems virtually impossible !

On my machine running under Win XP, thusfar I have tried in vain to import existing email contacts from other email clients into my newly-created Opera Mail client account. Opera hardly advertises the possibilities which it can undoubtedly offer in this important field. Not only did direct import of contacts from Thunderbird fail painfully; I have also converted my Thunderbird address book to various popular formats (such as .csv .txt .wab and . ldif) and tried to get these files into Opera Mail somehow. Up till now to no avail...

I would recommend that Opera - especially in the new 10.51 version in my eyes the best browser I ever had the chance to work with ! - pay substantially more attention to clear and customer-friendly information on this important topic. If anyone could - for starters - give me a simple solution to my problem, I would be very grateful!

Welcome to the forum!

You are absolutely right, importing adress books into Opera is a great pain.

The easiest way to convert your address book has always been http://www.hallvord.com/opera/conversion1.htm (scroll all the way down past the comments). Upload a comma or tab delimited address files, it will convert it to Opera's format.

By the way, the owner of the site works for Opera

If you are new to Opera Mail, you may want to take some time to read http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=513921

Liebe(r?) WildEnte:

Auf deutsch geht's auch...

Danke schön für deine rapide Reaktion. Ich benutze Opera schon seit vielen Jahren als Standard-Browser - bin jedoch erst seit Version 10.51 total begeistert, vor Allem Dank der beachtlichen Vergrösserung der Möglichkeiten durch Opera Unite.

Deine authoritative Artikel hatte ich schon zuvor mit regem Interesse gelesen und "zu mir genommen". Leider komme ich auch bei www.hallvord.com nicht sehr viel weiter. Die dort gebotene Auswahl an verfügbaren Rubriken ist leider ziemlich beschränkt - vor Allem im Vergleich mit dem Windows Address Book (WAB), worin ich meine Adressliste ursprünglich eingeführt hatte. Dadurch müsste auch mein Opera Adressbuch idealiter bestückt sein mit (mindestens!) den nachfolgenden Rubriken:

Vorname - Familienname - Wiedergabename - Emailadresse - Telefon Zuhause - Mobiltelefon - Strasse - Wohnort - Postleitzahl.

Wenn du diesbezüglich Vorschläge hättest, wären die mir äusserst willkommen!

Auf jedem Fall werde ich mich auch an Hallvord wenden. Vielleicht kan man dort mein Problemchen auf einfachster Weise lösen??? Man weiss ja nie...

Vielen Dank für deine nette und praxisorientierte Hilfe!

Gruss,
Gromsel
(rdjb.media@gmail.com)

We should stick to english in this forum so others can join in on discussions because (I hate to admit this) I don't know everything!

Anyway, if the hallvord website doesn't help you, you could try a program called dawn. I don't know much about it though other than that it is an address book converter tool.

http://www.cnet.de/downloads/windows/170274/dawn.htm

Let me know if that works for you.... I do agree that the address importing functions of Opera should be better if they really want folks to switch.

You are so right - I offer my sincere apologies to all forum readers worldwide for my posting in German. It won't happen anymore!

I have used Dawn for quite some time now. It is indeed an excellent address book converter. All conversions from from my original WAB contact list to standard formats such as .csv, .txt, .vcf and .ldif, were made with Dawn and I update them on a weekly basis. The only problem remains, that somehow I don't seem to be able to import any of these internationally recognized and standardized formats into the Opera email client's contact list. All competing email clients accept these formats without any hesitation whatsoever. This should give the good people who develop Opera something to think about, if they really want to penetrate the market more profoundly.

Also I get the impression that the Opera contact list has quite a few limitations as to its content possibilities. Ideally, such a freely convertible standard contact list should in my humble opinion at least contain the following fields (as derived from the Windows Address Book, which has - like it nor not! - set the worldwide norm decades ago):

First Name - Surname - Full Name - Email Address - Home Phone - Mobile Phone - Street - Town - Postal Code

Anything less would seem to be rather too primitive.

Thanks again for your kind advices!

Gromsel
rjdb.media@gmail.com

Just import things into Outlook Express, export all fields to csv and use this to convert the csv to Opera's adr format. Then, file -> import and export -> import contacts.

I have tried this four times with the first link above and always receive incorrect imported contacts. It neglects to import the email address, instead it puts the first name in the email field and the last name in the name field. Checking the properties of the test file shows the email address.

Opera has so many built-in goodies, that it really makes no sense relying on a third-party app to do a basic function like import/export.

I use the Opera 10.10 Build 4742 on Linux.
My email account with GMX and Gmail are setup with IMAP on the mail client.
I also use Opera Link to sync notes & bookmarks.

The ONE big pain is synchronizing contacts.

I've noticed in a lot of phones and web services, the most common format used to import/export contacts is vCard (VCF).

I doesn't bother me so much, but I'd like to know if this can be added in Opera

Opera has so many built-in goodies, that it really makes no sense relying on a third-party app to do a basic function like import/export.

I use the Opera 10.10 Build 4742 on Linux.
My email account with GMX and Gmail are setup with IMAP on the mail client.
I also use Opera Link to sync notes & bookmarks.

The ONE big pain is synchronizing contacts.

I've noticed in a lot of phones and web services, the most common format used to import/export contacts is vCard (VCF).

I doesn't bother me so much, but I'd like to know if this can be added in Opera

Originally posted by geoffmx:

but I'd like to know if this can be added in Opera

They could, if a developer has time to research the vCard format and write a parser (including parsing vCard files that have multiple entries in them and the test cases that go along with it) for it. In addition, there'd have to be some UI work to integrate it. In addition, there'd have to be some strings added to Oprea for the UI, which would require those to be localized etc.

Then, there'd have to be some code that uses the parser to convert the data into Opera's adr format.

Or, if Opera is to switch to using the vcf format for storage of contacts, there'd be more work there, including adr to vcf conversion so users can import their old adr files.

Then, when it comes to csv formats, Opera would have to add an importer for that too, or users would have to rely on the hallvord.com converters to convert to adr and users would have to import that.

Then, if Opera was to support synchronizing contacts, code would have to be written for that too.

I think all that'd be great. It just sounds like quite a bit of work (that would take a while).

What do you think about an Opera Abook import widget/unite app that could convert all kinds of formats to Opera's adr format (with the support to trigger the import of the resulting adr file into Opera from inside the widget)? If there's an open source Javascript vCard parser, this might make writing the widget easier.

I'm sure it is a lot of work and the Opera developers should give it a thought.

New or existing users may want to import/export their contacts between mail clients in various formats.
This should be a basic feature, else it makes it cumbersome for people trying out the mail client.

+1 for the widget

Originally posted by geoffmx:

+1 for the widget

I made an Outlook Express abook.csv -> opera.adr Widget to at least test the idea out. It's super-experimental/pre-alpha etc. and my first try at making a widget.

It does the conversion automatically. No need to choose what column goes where etc.

It will handle complex csv entries.

But:

There's no file-size check yet. So, don't open an iso with it.

And, I'm currently copying the whole csv file into memory, passing around a copy or 2, storing the whole converted adr file as a string and then writing out the data to the target file. This means that it might crap out (as in produce an empty adr file) if the csv file is a little big as it'll cause the widget to use too much memory. (By too much, I mean a few MBs. Not sure what the mem limit for widgets is, but it might be low. I'll optimize this later so none of this will matter anyway)

Anyway, it's just something to play with for now and is basically a quick port of oe_csv_to_opera_adr.exe.

But, if things work out, I'll make it so converters can be easily added to it (to do vcard or something).

Finally a useful widget! Burnout to the rescue!

I like it

Originally posted by WildEnte:

Finally a useful widget

I agree. It's not something you would use everyday, but definitely a very useful widget.

Originally posted by burnout426:

And, I'm currently copying the whole csv file into memory, passing around a copy or 2, storing the whole converted adr file as a string and then writing out the data to the target file. This means that it might crap out (as in produce an empty adr file) if the csv file is a little big as it'll cause the widget to use too much memory. (By too much, I mean a few MBs. Not sure what the mem limit for widgets is, but it might be low. I'll optimize this later so none of this will matter anyway)

I fixed this stuff. It's basically: Read an entry from the csv file, write out its converted entry to the adr and repeat till it's done.

FYI: You can always view the directory to see older versions.

It doesn't work for me. I can convert the csv into an adr. But when I import it in Opera, I only get a new map "Imported contacts". But when I click this map it's empty and I don't see any contacts. I've tried all the widgets and exe-files in the directory in your last post.

I found a link that does work for me.
At the bottom of the page you can convert your csv-file to an adr-file.

http://www.hallvord.com/opera/conversion1.htm

Originally posted by jamflava:

It doesn't work for me.

I've learned that Outlook Express exports csv files with the header names in localized form. My converters expect English headers. Specifically, they accept these: "Name", "First Name", "Last Name", "Middle Name", "Nickname", "Personal Web Page", "Notes", "E-mail Address", "Home Phone", "Home Fax", "Home Street", "Home City", "Home Postal Code", "Home State", "Home Country/Region".

If they're not in that format, conversion won't work right (you'll get an empty list of imported contacts).

Originally posted by jamflava:

I found a link that does work for me.
At the bottom of the page you can convert your csv-file to an adr-file.

http://www.hallvord.com/opera/conversion1.htm

Yes, that one should work better as it allows you to choose what's used for what. I'll probably make my stuff do that too, eventually. But, I was hoping to avoid that as it then not automatic.

Originally posted by jerrysdean43:

I have tried this four times with the first link above and always receive incorrect imported contacts. It neglects to import the email address, instead it puts the first name in the email field and the last name in the name field. Checking the properties of the test file shows the email address.

I have learned the secret to fixing this. Open the exported .csv file and look at the headers in the first row. Wherever the e-mail address is, change the header to read E-mail (or email, I don't remember). Sometimes it says "Primary e-mail" or something like that. The conversion program doesn't recognize that header.

Originally posted by burnout426:

Just import things into Outlook Express, export all fields to csv and use this to convert the csv to Opera's adr format. Then, file -> import and export -> import contacts.

I've been hoping for years for something that would import the notes field correctly. This worked perfectly! Thanks!

Originally posted by JeffNeedle:

I have learned the secret to fixing this. Open the exported .csv file and look at the headers in the first row. Wherever the e-mail address is, change the header to read E-mail (or email, I don't remember). Sometimes it says "Primary e-mail" or something like that. The conversion program doesn't recognize that header.

For my Outlook Express CSV Abook Converter widget, I made this clear that the headers OE produces differ depending on your language and made it clear that only en_US headers names are supported right now. But, in convert.js in the widget, you can add another header language mapping object (by using the existing one as an example) and it should automatically add support for that language when you repackage the files. I haven't tested this yet though, but the support is there.

If anyone wants to send me some Outlook Express csv files with non english headers or ones with different headers than mentioned in http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=5830092 , I should be able to add mappings for them.