The Definitive Address Book
Duration
30 mins - 3 hrs
Requirements
Gmail account, Facebook account, Address Book (OSX)
Optional
iPhone
Last Modified
09th October 2008
Tired of having your friend details in multiple places? This guide lets you bring all those details together into your Address Book. Grab their email from Gmail, their birthday and photo from Facebook and their numbers from your iPhone.

Furthermore, with Address Book and iCal's integration, you will automatically be informed of your friend's birthdays through your calendar, even on your iPhone.
  1. Exporting from Facebook...
  1. Use my facebook application to export the details of your friends
  2. Important: you will not be able to easily remove these details later, so do not add any unnecessary details
  3. Follow the instructions and save the '.vcf' file somewhere useful
  1. Exporting from Gmail...
  1. Log into Gmail and select 'Contacts' from the left menu
  2. Go through your 'Suggested Contacts' and promote any appropriate ones to 'My Contacts'
  3. Important: Go through all your contacts and ensure the names are consistent with those on Facebook (this will save you time later)
  4. You may wish to take this opportunity to remove any old emails. I recommend using the 'show recent conversations' link to help root them out
  5. Click on the 'Export' link on the top right and choose to export my 'My Contacts'
  6. Save the '.vcf' file somewhere useful
  1. Importing into Address Book...
  1. Open 'Address Book'
  2. Important: back up your contacts! I take no responsibility for any data loss.
    Select 'File > Back UP Address Book'
  3. Important: Go through all your contacts and ensure the names are consistent with those on Facebook (this will save you time later)
  4. Important: One at a time, drag the previously created '.vcf' files onto the 'Address Book' application and choose to review duplicates. In doing so...
  1. Blue indicates an added detail
  2. Red indicates a replacement
  3. For people with more than one email address, keep both cards
  1. Go through your contacts and...
  1. Find any duplicates and manually merge the details. This includes watching out for alternative name spellings. You will not have to do this next time for the same detail
  2. Where appropriate, make some contacts into companies
  1. Sync with your iPhone...
  1. Sync your iPhone with iTunes. In doing so, make sure you sync 'All Contacts'
This process can be repeated as frequently as you like. Once you have done this for the first time, it will much faster to repeat.