Getting Outlook to export Exchange contacts as vCards (vcf) with proper email addresses for use in macOS

In 2009 I wrote about how it was getting harder to move contact information out of Outlook into something else (like macOS Contacts). I wrote about some options, but that's not what I do now.

Here's what I do (tested in Mojave, which I'm still using because Aperture):

1. Create a simple list Contacts view. I usually only want people so I sort by last name. In a few cases last name of people is blank so I fix that.
2. Now create an empty email. Drag Contacts from Outlook's view into the email body. It has to be to the email, dragging to desktop creates a .msg file. It might fail if you do too many so I distribute 300-400 contacts across 4 separate emails. Outlook creates a vCard file as an attachment. It resolves the email too, so instead of an Outlook x400 (?) you get a proper email address.
3. Send the email to your Mac
4. On the Mac download all attachments. They show as VCF files and macOS renders them quite well.  If they have photos the photos show within the card icon. Spotlight indexes them all. You don't even need to bother with dropping them into Contacts (though that's easy to do, you can drop them into your Contacts Groups (folders)).

It's pretty easy if you know the trick. I've not seen it described anywhere else but I'm sure others know it.

Migrate Contacts from Outlook/Exchange server to OS X Contacts

I last wrote about migrating contacts from Outlook/Exchange server to OS X in 2011.

Back then one of the issues with migration then was that Exchange uses X400 format email addresses. One way to make Outlook convert to internet is to drag contacts into an email — that produces .vcf files (undocumented) with internet email addresses. In 2011 I wrote that dragging into a local PST did the same thing. Not sure that still works.

Here’s what I did recently …

1. Drag and drop from Outlook/Exchange into email (undocumented export)
2. From email save to desktop.
3. Drag and drop the .vcf files into OS X Contacts (undocumented import.

From OS X contacts they can go to iCloud as usual.

Incidentally, i couldn’t see any way to readily import a set of single contact .vcf files into Outlook 2016. It only wanted to import them one a time. Drag and drop of the files into Outlook resulted simply in Outlook opening each one until Windows 10 die.

Upgrading Office 365 from Personal to Home - it could be easier

I like Office 365 Personal. The Mac version has bugs of course, but it seems to improve with each incremental release. For $70 a year I have a version running on my Mac and a version running in a Windows 10 VM (in theory it only installs one either 1 Mac or 1 Windows machine, but in practice it seems to allow both at once). The cost seems entirely reasonable to me. There’s little data lock because so many apps read and write (more or less) Office files. It’s the kind of subscription software I love.

So I didn’t mind when I had to get another license to cover my son. I figured I’d just upgrade to Home. 

Except it’s quite unclear how you do that. This 2015 article suggests there’s a bit of an underhanded trick to it: How I upgraded Office 365 Personal to Office 365 Home for $10. That’s sort of how it works except it’s as designed, it’s not a bug or trick.

I had a month left on my Personal (1 machine) subscription. I bought Home (5 machine) for $10/month (renewable). MSFT switched my remaining month from Personal to Home. Then a month from now, it was to start charging me $10 a month. In MSFT parlance the subscriptions “stack”.

I suppose the trick deal is to buy a year of Personal, then immediately get a $10/month subscription to Home. Then you’d get a year of Home at the Personal price.

In my case it took a call to support for me to understand what had happened. Microsoft could improve this process. Once I figured it out I switched from $10/month to $99 a year. That switch was easy — and MSFT threw in a free month (standard behavior). 

Clean install of windows 10 on VMWare Mac - getting a license ($130)

I needed to use Microsoft Access.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re wrong. Yes, Access is a horrible old patchwork beast, but for some kind of data manipulation it’s still unequaled. It’s particularly good at mixing local data store with ODBC stores. It helps that I know where the bugs are buried — though Access 365 on Windows 10 is particularly buggy.

So about two weeks ago I fired up my old copy of VMWare Fusion 7, downloaded Windows Pro 64bit OEM and used my multi-platform multi-machine Office 365 license to install Microsoft Access. It was all relatively painless. I did find Fusion 7 isn’t happy with Yosemite virtual desktop, so I only use full screen Win 10 in just one display. That works until I do my El Capitan/Fusion 8 update.

The entire package takes up about 23GB on an external SSD. 

I did wonder how I was going to pay for Win 10. It was working without complaint. I figured I’d get some kind of notice. About two weeks after installation it began showing a watermark on the screen requesting activation and personalization features were turned off. That was a polite reminder.

I went hunting for a Win 7 or 8 license  to get the free upgrade — but no-one I knew had one to spare. My own Windows licenses was for XP, that didn’t help. I couldn’t find any good educational deals either. Amazon had lots of Win 7/8/10 licenses at suspiciously low prices, all of which seemed a mixture of counterfeit and genuine product. (Amazon — the crooked pawn shop of the Net.)

In the end I remembered PC Connection and found that while MSFT charges $200 for a Win 10 Pro 64bit license PC Connection had an OEM version for about $145. Once I knew the right price range I found an OEM version on Amazon that shipped from Amazon for about $135. I can’t link to it because Amazon’s fraud-friendly habit of consolidating product listings that ship from multiple sources mixed in their source with $105 versions that seem to include counterfeits.

It came in a legitimate looking Microsoft white envelope holding some kind of disk thing envelope (what’s a DVD?) with a sticker and license number on the front of the inner envelope. The license number was all I needed, it worked.

Yosemite, Fusion 7, Windows 10, Office 365: experience

I am a bit freaked out about how painless this was. The experience was surreal to someone of my vintage.

My primary machine is a 10 month old MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM, 1.6GHz i5 and a 256GB internal SSD running Yosemite. A Thunderbolt 2 Hub connects an USB 3 external 1TB SSD and an old Firewire 800 3TB external drive and separate 3TB backup cradle. All pretty generic stuff.

For work reasons I bought Office 365 Mac. I thought I might be able to avoid Windows entirely, but a new contract meant I couldn’t escape.

So I installed my Fusion VM 7.x and an old XP image with Office 2007. The image is stored on my external SSD. That went disturbingly well, so I downloaded the Windows 10 ISO (64 bit) and asked Fusion to create a new image from the ISO. That also went disturbingly well. The only glitch was it hung during VMWare Tools installation. I had to restart the VM and I reinstalled the tools.

Then, hey, what the hell, I installed Office 365 too. The usual 365 license covers several machines, both Windows and Mac. Yeah, same thing. No problem.

The image on the external SSD took 12.6GB with just Windows 10 Pro, 14.45 after Office 365 installed. Heck, I’ll probably move it back to my primary SSD.

The performance of my very generic low end MacBook Air is excellent. Modern SSDs are a miracle.

Very. Strange.