Tuesday, October 09, 2018

Even supposed whiz-kids get it wrong


So I needed to try to export Contacts info in OSX High Sierra to a CSV file. Sounds simple enough, right? If *I* had written the Contacts app, this would be a direct thing off the file menu.

Apple, however, in its infinite wisdom, has completely failed on this. You cannot. Full stop.

You should NOT need an Advanced Degree (tm) to figure this out. But apparently you do.


OK, that said, there is a way, but it's really stupid to have to do it. OK, there might be two. I only tried one.

You have to open Contacts, figure out how to "Select All" (or whatever subset you like), then you open Numbers (yes, Numbers), and click/hold/drag that bunch of contacts over into Numbers (and not just anywhere, you have to land on the actual cells grid. Then you wait a few moments, and poof, the cells are filled with your data. 

From Numbers, you can then do a CSV save. Ye Gods.

That is pointlessly over-complex. CSV is a basic output flavor for contact info--even if you don't look at it in a table (come to think of it, why is THAT not an option? What happens when I need to look at two at once?), it's a table, and. you can always output a table as CSV.

Especially when most things that import tabular data want either a CSV or XLS. Like something I'd need to dump contacts info into.

-----

Looks like Automator might be able to do it. And there maybe is an app in the Store that reads the regular abbu export and makes a CSV. 

Seriously?

No comments: