Apple Address Book Integration

[vespidae]

Call me a newbie, but for the life of me I can't seem to get Metal Adium 0.82 and Apple Address Book 4.0.2 on Mac Os X 10.4.2 to work togeather. I've looked through these post, but can't seem to find any difinitive answers either. My question is rather simply I thought...

How do I import my Address Book Contacts?
Once the contact are in, do they stay synced?

Any light on the subject appreciated!


Cheers
Dave

[jstamos]

You cannot import contacts from the address book in Adium. That's why you can't figure it out

[vespidae]

You cannot import contacts from the address book in Adium. That's why you can't figure it out

Doh! So whats the go with the Advanced section in Aduim Preferences:
"Import my contacts' names from the Address Book"?

[kirk]

Just what it means: Adium imports contact's name from Address Book.

Adium takes your contacts' information from the Address Book and adds them to your buddies.

[evands]

Specifically, if you have an address book card which lists "TekJew" as an AIM name, the AIM name TekJew will automatically have the name from the card ("Evan Schoenberg"), the picture if you assigned one, etc. Also, if you have "TekJew" (AIM) and "tekjew@jabber.org" (Jabber) on the same card, the two will automatically be combined into a metacontact.

[vespidae]

I had originally added contacts to Adium and filled in their "alias" and was wondering why I wasn't getting their full name from Address Book. If I get info from the Adium Contact List and remove the alias, it updates with their Address Book name instantly. Bingo!!

So for all those like me who were confused about this:
1. Add your contact details to Address Book [incl Name, Nickname, IM account and picture]
2. Add just the contact's account name to Adium. [all the rest of the info will be imported from Address Book].


Thanks again.

[lev]

This is great, but isn't it possible to view a buddy's card in the Address Book directly from the chat or the contact list window? All I can get is their personal details, but not the Address Book.

[ofri]

This is great, but isn't it possible to view a buddy's card in the Address Book directly from the chat or the contact list window? All I can get is their personal details, but not the Address Book.

In 0.9 there will be a contextual menu - "Show In Address Book" - in the contact list if this is what you mean.

[lev]

In 0.9 there will be a contextual menu - "Show In Address Book" - in the contact list if this is what you mean.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Good to know it will be there in 0.9. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks and keep up the good work!

[m_beckman]

Would it be possible to make Adium automaticly add contacts from the Address book? So that if I add a MSN adress to a contact in the Address Book then Adium would add the MSN contact to my list.

Maybe it can't be totally automatic, but could it could be done with an apple script???
(But in my dreams someone mails me a vcard and the moment I add the vcard to my Adress Book a new metacontact shows up in my contact list.)

[ofri]

Would it be possible to make Adium automaticly add contacts from the Address book? So that if I add a MSN adress to a contact in the Address Book then Adium would add the MSN contact to my list.

Maybe it can't be totally automatic, but could it could be done with an apple script???
(But in my dreams someone mails me a vcard and the moment I add the vcard to my Adress Book a new metacontact shows up in my contact list.)

This is a very interesting idea but i think that a large number of users wouldn't use it. I personally think it's a very cool and useful one. What do others think?

[The_Tick]

I might use it, but might not. If we move address book out of advanced prefs I can see adding this as a pref.

[vespidae]

I'd totally like to see that. Maybe instead of having it as a preference for auto-import, you could get some hooks into iSync. That way a user could sync their addresses, ical, phone, pda and IM contact all in one easy click of a button. Yummy!

[ofri]

I'd totally like to see that. Maybe instead of having it as a preference for auto-import, you could get some hooks into iSync. That way a user could sync their addresses, ical, phone, pda and IM contact all in one easy click of a button. Yummy!

IIRC iSync requires you to have a .mac account which i don't think most of the users have.

[sharth]

Would it be possible to make Adium automaticly add contacts from the Address book? So that if I add a MSN adress to a contact in the Address Book then Adium would add the MSN contact to my list.

Maybe it can't be totally automatic, but could it could be done with an apple script???
(But in my dreams someone mails me a vcard and the moment I add the vcard to my Adress Book a new metacontact shows up in my contact list.)

This is a very interesting idea but i think that a large number of users wouldn't use it. I personally think it's a very cool and useful one. What do others think?

I'd hate it simply because AIM has a limited number of contacts that you're able to have. I like to keep the names in my address book, so that if anyone tries to contact me, I only have to figure out who they are once. That and I generally don't care if some of the people that I know the screen name for are online.

[asterix]

I would really appreciate an option to import contacts from apple addressbook.
how this option looks in detail, isn't that important.

One possibility is to auto-detect new contacts. Here I see the problem of how you detect changes. It might me a performance problem to continously watch the addressbook file, so it might be better to check only every hour, at startup, or once when adium is activated (you change from another app to adium).
If you auto-detect new contact's I'd display a notice in case new contacts are found and let the user choose if he wants to add them to his buddylist.

And with auto-detection I would add an option to deactivate this feature.

Another possibility is to simply add an function "Find new contacts from Address Book", or similar, which starts the search procedure.
Again, I would opt for akind of popup, where you can choose, for every found contact whether if you want to add it or not. (Perpaps with "Add all" button)

Well, that's my thought. I hope, this helps a little.