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Unable to Import LDIF
 
#1
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I have exported my Thunderbird address books to LDIF files.  When I try to import them into The Bat's default address book, I get the error message "No Addresses Have Been Imported", and none are.  When I examine the LDIF files in Notepad, they look alright.  I tried exporting from TBird to LDIF with a 3rd party tool, Address Magic, and got the same result.

Any advice?
 
 
 
#2
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You may try exporting from Thunderbird as .csv or tab delimited and then import to The Bat using one of those methods.
 
 
 
#3
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You may try exporting from Thunderbird as .csv or tab delimited and then import to The Bat using one of those methods.

.txt: The correct number of entries are imported, but the fields are all wrong, e.g. the names fields in The Bat are various fields merged, no addresses fields are correctly populated, etc.

.csv: Better, but still does not yield a useable address book due to too many parsing errors.

Perhaps if I struggle with editing the contents of TAB delimited or CSV file long enough, I can get a reasonable facimile of my Thunderbird address book into TB.  But, to make matters worse, The Bat does not seem to save the CSV import template for reuse in subsequent import attempts; the prospect of remapping the fields every time is unappealing.

An LDIF import should enable more accurate field parsing ... if I could get it to work.

Can anyone confirm that they have successfully performed an LDIF address book import with version 3.71.03 of The Bat?
 
 
 
#4
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David Gilmour wrote:
Can anyone confirm that they have successfully performed an LDIF address book import with version 3.71.03 of The Bat?
I tried and couldn't do it either. I got the same "No addresses have been imported" message that you did. Don't know if it's The Bat or Thunderbird that's at fault.
 
 
 
#5
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Thanks for confirming that you can repeat the problem Jim.  Since I also tried using a 3rd party app, Address Magic, to convert the T-Bird address book to LDIF, and got the same result when attempting to import those results into The Bat, I suspect the problem lies within The Bat.

I suppose it's time for me to try out the Bug Report feature ...
 
 
 
#6
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thanks, David, for the report.

a quick investigation revealed that the cause are "modifytimestamp:" lines in the LDIF file.

until we release a proper fix, the workaround would be stripping them off before the import.
 
 
 
#7
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there's also this:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119946

that particularly states "so if you export to ldif, the value will always be zero" - exactly what we see.

hence, if those lines contain "0Z" as the value, they can be harmlessly skipped from the Mozilla-generated LDIF output.
 
 
 
#8
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Vitalie Vrabie wrote:
there's also this:https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119946

that particularly states "so if you export to ldif, the value will always be zero" - exactly what we see.

If Mozilla's bug report is accurate, that bug was first posted in January of 2002 and they still haven't fixed it!!
 
 
 
#9
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Vitalie Vrabie wrote:
a quick investigation revealed that the cause are "modifytimestamp:" lines in the LDIF file.

until we release a proper fix, the workaround would be stripping them off before the import.

Thank you Vitalie for giving this your quick attention.

With the LDIF file modified as you suggested, I was able to correctly import names and e-mail addresses.  But no other fields in the LDIF data, including addresses, phone numbers, and company names, were imported.  Is there an efficient way to import that data too?
 
 
 
#10
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Bump - Just wondering if anyone can confirm that The Bat's LDIF address book import should bring in more than just names and e-mail addresses?
 
 
 
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