Address Book

is more of an all-new application than a revision even though the interface has not changed much. Address Book finally has a preference file that can be opened from application menu but there's not much too it at present. It can be connected to an LDAP server like Mail and it works for us just like Mail.

Address Book doesn't do well, or maybe at all, at importing data other than VCF "cards" and LDIF. We had a hard time figuring out how to get our Entourage contacts into Address Book. Finally, we remembered that when an Entourage contact entry is dragged and dropped onto the finder it becomes a VCF file or "card". So we highlighted the whole bunch in Entourage's contacts window and dragged and dropped them into a folder. Then we used Address Book's import function under the file menu and navigated to the folder containing the dragged and dropped Entourage VCF "cards" to import them. There may be some AppleScripts around for importing contacts from a variety of email clients but we haven't looked. iSync should provide an easy way of doing this if contacts are on a PDA or digital phone.

[Update] Joe Sacco provided this Apple KBase article on an unsupported import script:

"You may import addresses into Address Book from Microsoft Outlook Express, Eudora, Microsoft Entourage, Claris Emailer, Netscape, or Palm Desktop using the "Import Addresses.scpt". Follow these steps:

1. Open Import Addresses.scpt (/Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts).

2. Script Editor opens. Click Run.

3. Follow the on-screen prompts to choose the source of the addresses that you are importing. The script will import addresses automatically once you answer the prompts."

The importation worked perfectly for our contacts. All data for a contact in our Entourage contacts ended up in our Address Book, including birthdays and other special occasions or personal data. The latter ended up with the appropriate custom label. One can edit an entry and add whatever data one wants and give it a custom label.

Address Book works great in integration with Sherlock 3 and Mail. Click on an address and you can get a map of how to get there. Click on an email address and Mail opens a blank email page to fill out and send. If it is a mac.com address you can use iChat or go to the public folder of their iDisk. All of this functionality worked perfectly for us.