Transferring contacts from a PC to a Mac

21 Mar 2012 20:36:26

Lionel Ogden

Is there a simple way to copy all the contacts from a PC to a Mac so that they can be imported into the Mac Address Book.

The only way that has occurred to me so far is to export the PC contacts as Vcards to a folder on the PC desktop and then copy this folder to the Mac using a USB stick or Dropbox and then import the V cards to Address Book. But this seems a touch laborious.

Re: Transferring contacts from a PC to a Mac

23 Mar 2012 11:48:37

Mick Burrell

That's probably the best way but it assumes that:

1) The Windows program that currently holds the addresses can export a vCard (they often can)

2) That the Windows user can put the contact's first name in the first name field, last name in the last name field, email address in the email field etc. I've not come across one who can yet!

Re: Transferring contacts from a PC to a Mac

23 Mar 2012 19:05:38

Lionel Ogden

Apparently it gets simpler. The contacts have been synchronised via iTunes on the PC with an iPhone. I expect it would then be possible to sync the iPhone with iTunes on the Mac. It is also possible to access iCloud from a PC so that is yet another way to sync the contacts.

Re: Transferring contacts from a PC to a Mac

24 Mar 2012 12:21:50

Mick Burrell

I hadn't considered the PC user would be so Apple ;-)

Re: Transferring contacts from a PC to a Mac

23 Apr 2012 13:27:11

Lionel Ogden

Apparently not quite so simple. The contacts were synchronised to the iPhone from the PC, but when it was attempted to synchronise the Macbook to the iPhone, the iPhone contacts were wiped. i.e. the iPhone was synchronised to an empty address book on the Macbook. Is there a way of changing the direction of the sync?

Re: Transferring contacts from a PC to a Mac

23 Apr 2012 17:44:29

Douglas Cheney

When I set my Daughter up on a Mac I had to export the PC contacts as vcards the load them into address book, took a long time

Re: Transferring contacts from a PC to a Mac

24 Apr 2012 10:30:40

Mick Burrell

Too late now Lionel - you need to understand what is likely to happen before you press Go! There's an option (when connecting phone to iTunes on the Mac by cable) to get the Mac to overwrite the phone but not I think in the other direction. Using iCloud, I think you can tell it to merge contacts.