Problems exporting Address Lists to CSV (not all address are exporting, data getting corrupted)
I'm exporting a list from within my address book, but the resulting data is inconsistent. Some of the names/emails are exporting okay, but throughout the list there are some records that just seem to go crazy (I mean the data just winds up in the wrong fields randomly, some records just don't seem to export at all, etc.) I've got a list of about 1,400 contacts, but only about 1,000 of them are exporting in the correct fields.
I brought the CSV file into Excel and tried to clean it up, but I can see that there are still going to be a lot of missing records. I suspect it's because there must be some long strings (or illegal characters) in some of the comments fields (which were copied from a form people filled out when they joined my list). I'm trying to export this so that I can move it to a commercial email service like MailChimp.
Anybody have experience with this?
Chosen solution
Then try a difference export, like tab delimited. Excel will open it just as easily as comma delimited and it is unlikely your file will have embedded tabs. At least I hope so.
In future you might want to sanitize rubbish from the web before you import it into Thunderbird, or any other program.
BTW sending mail to me will not get any information on Mail Chimp. They can only report on those that enable remote images, but there marketing information is light on detail there.
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Chosen Solution
Then try a difference export, like tab delimited. Excel will open it just as easily as comma delimited and it is unlikely your file will have embedded tabs. At least I hope so.
In future you might want to sanitize rubbish from the web before you import it into Thunderbird, or any other program.
BTW sending mail to me will not get any information on Mail Chimp. They can only report on those that enable remote images, but there marketing information is light on detail there.
Okay, I tried the tab delimited and got the same result. It seems that with some of the records, everything is winding up in the first name field. Then some lines are just coming in as blank.
Interesting to note that this is happening throughout the file. There will be a section of records that came in just fine, then a bunch of lines where there's data ONLY in the "first name" field, then another section of records that look okay.
This list was built over a very long time, starting out in Outlook Express back in the 90s (which I later imported to Thunderbird about 5 years ago) so it's difficult to determine where the glitch may have occurred. The Personal Address Book has about 3,000 names in it. The list I'm trying to export contains only those who get my newsletter (about 1,400 names).
As it started out very small, my method for collecting these was pretty primitive; I had a form on my website that simply sent me an email. It contained 4 fields, first name, last name, zip, comments, but those were just sent to me in a simple text message. I'd cut and paste the whole message into the "Comments" field in Thunderbird, and then cut and paste (or just type) the name and email address into the correct fields. I used the "Custom 1" field to note where the response came from. So a typical record in the Thunderbird Address Book looks like this:
Contact
Display Name: Fxxxx Cxxx
Email: [email protected]
Home
United States
Other
Custom 1: Free MP3 Offer 2011-07
FirstName: xxxxx
LastName: xxxx
Email: [email protected]
Zip: United States
Comments:
Good luck with the new CD
No problems with MailChimp. They're pretty straight-forward. I just need to get a usable CSV file out of Thunderbird without losing a third of my contacts.