Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Access OS X Address Book records using OpenOffice database?

While idly browsing FileMaker forums contemplating the futility of Bento and the tragedy of FileMaker 10 and the theory that Product Managers hate me I came across a remarkable post:
Does FMP 10 have full integration with Address Book? - Using FileMaker Pro - FileMaker Forum

... I looked at addressbookmanipulator but it seems to be a development plugin. It costs $74 via credit card. It doesn't transform FMP in Bento with respect to address book integration :-( I would love to be able to select the address book as a data source in FMP.

Another promising option is OpenOffice 3.0. Its database wizard offers to connect to an existing database and lists Mac OS X Address Book as an option. When using it you get what seems a complete table for each Address Book group and includes the UID. The downside is that you can't edit the data ...
OpenOffice?

Well, yes. For example (read only, no edits):
I'll have to give OpenOffice a try! It's sad that OO can do what FM can't. Along with the A to G Address book utility this may be another tool to use in my quest to create a unified work/home Google Contacts collection that will sync via Google's ActiveSync Exchange service to my iPhone.

Soon, victory will be mine (queue insane, evil, laughter)...

Update: Dang! OpenOffice 3 is still Intel only! If you try to download you get a "bouncer" error. On the other hand, you can download a pre-release 3.01 rc2 PPC version from a dev site (this is seriously weird, and not encouraging).

On the other hand, the Java based NeoOffice 2.x and 3.x preview both have PPC versions.

Update: Wow, OpenOffice 3.0 PPC is pretty spartan. Lots of redraw artifacts on my G5. It did open the data, but I haven't yet figured out how to export from OO Database in any format. A useful tool though.

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