Exporting your Evolution addressbook

If you are using Evolution, and you want to migrate to something better (like Mozilla Thunderbird), this may be helpful to you. Evolution can export its addressbook to a vcard format, but Mozilla Thunderbird cannot import vcard addressbook. The script will export your evolution addressbook to a tab seperated file which you can then import into Thunderbird. And hopefully live happily after.

You need the following two scripts -

• exportevolution.py -> Python script to export your evolution addressbook to the vcard format.
• vcard2tab.pl -> Perl script to convert the vcard produced above to comma seperated file.

Copy these two scripts, do a chmod a+x exportevolution.py and chmod a+x vcard2csv.pl . Next use the following command ./exportevolution.py|./vcard2csv.pl >addressbook.csv. You will have your arressbook in addressbook.csv . If you have found an easier way to do it, please let me know.

===start file exportevolution.py===
#!/usr/bin/python2

import bsddb, os, re

home = os.getenv('HOME')

# This is the only variable you should change.  If you do not know the
# location of your evloution address book, use `locate addressbook.db`
# to find it

dbname = '%s/evolution/local/Contacts/addressbook.db' % home


db = bsddb.hashopen(dbname, 'r')

for k in db.keys():
    for line in db[k].split('\n'):
    print line

db.close()
===end file exportevolution.py===

===start file vcard2tab.pl===
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
my $line;
my $name;
my $tel_work_voice;
my $tel_work_fax;
my $tel_home;
my $tel_pager;
my $tel_cell;
my $tel_voice;
my $email;

while ( $line = < STDIN > ) {
    chomp ($line);
    chop ($line) ; # trailing ^M

#BEGIN:VCARD
    if  ( $line eq "BEGIN:VCARD" ) {
        $name = "";
        $tel_work_voice = "";   
        $tel_work_fax = "";
        $tel_home = "";
        $tel_pager = "";
        $tel_cell = "";
        $tel_voice = "";
        $email = "";
    }

#X-EVOLUTION-FILE-AS:
    if ( $line =~ /^X-EVOLUTION-FILE-AS\:.*/ ) {
        $line =~ s/^X-EVOLUTION-FILE-AS://g;       
        $name = $line;
        print $name." ";
        print "\t";
    }

#TEL;WORK;VOICE;
    if ( $line =~ /^TEL;WORK;VOICE:.*/ ) {
        $line =~ s/^TEL;WORK;VOICE://g;
        $tel_work_voice = $line;
    }

#TEL;WORK;FAX;
    if ( $line =~ /^TEL;WORK;FAX:.*/ ) {
        $line =~ s/^TEL;WORK;FAX://g;
        $tel_work_fax = $line;
    }

#TEL;HOME;
    if ( $line =~ /^TEL;HOME:.*/ ) {
        $line =~ s/^TEL;HOME://g;
        $tel_home = $line;
    }

#TEL;PAGER;
    if ( $line =~ /^TEL;PAGER:.*/ ) {
        $line =~ s/^TEL;PAGER://g;
        $tel_pager = $line;
    }

#TEL;CELL;
    if ( $line =~ /^TEL;CELL:.*/ ) {
        $line =~ s/^TEL;CELL://g;
        $tel_cell = $line;
    }

#TEL;VOICE;
    if ( $line =~ /^TEL;VOICE:.*/ ) {
        $line =~ s/^TEL;VOICE://g;
        $tel_voice = $line;
    }

#EMAIL;INTERNET;
    if ( $line =~ /^EMAIL;INTERNET:.*/ ) {
        $line =~ s/^EMAIL;INTERNET://g;
        $email = $email.$line;
    }

#EMAIL;QUOTED-PRINTABLE;INTERNET;
    if ( $line =~ /^EMAIL;QUOTED-PRINTABLE;INTERNET:.*/ ) {
        $line =~ s/^EMAIL;QUOTED-PRINTABLE;INTERNET://g;
        $line =~ s/=0A/ /g; #=0A make it a space
        $email = $email.$line;
    }

#END:VCARD   
    if ( $line eq "END:VCARD" )
    {
        if ( $tel_work_voice eq "" )
        { print ",";}
        else
        { print "wk=".$tel_work_voice.","; }
        if ( $tel_work_fax eq "" )
        { print ","; }
        else
        {print "fx=".$tel_work_fax.","; }
        if ( $tel_home eq "" )
        { print ","; }
        else
        {  print "hm=".$tel_home.","; }
        if ( $tel_pager eq "" )
        { print ","; }
        else {  print "pg=".$tel_pager.","; }
        if ( $tel_cell eq "" )
        { print ","; }
        else { print "cel=".$tel_cell.","; }
        if ( $tel_voice eq "" )
        { print ","; }
        else
        { print "alt=".$tel_voice.","; }
        if ( $email eq "" )
        {print ",";}
        else { print $email; }
        print "\n";
    }
    
    }

===end file vcard2tab.pl=== 

Send me your comments . Befoer mailing convert "at" in email addresses to "@" and remove any spaces in the email address. This is to prevent spamming.