AdamKB @ AOL.COM - Weblog

AOL Communicator
AOL Communicator is AOL's external email program. It is capable of synching with your AOL Address Book. You can then choose Export from the File menu (highlight All Contacts or specific Groups), which creates an LDIF File. This program will only work with host-based Address Books in recent versions of AOL (6.0 and later, I believe).

Intellisync for AOL
Windows users (only) can use Intellisync for AOL to transfer their address book to Outlook, Outlook Express, and Palm Desktop. From there it should be fairly easy to move the addresses into other programs.

AOL Address Book Extractor
Back in the days of Claris Emailer, Apple developed a tool that can export the Mac address book into a tab delineated text file. The tool was designed for AOL 3.0, but I've successfully tested it with AOL 5.0 under Mac OS 9.1.

There are other unofficial ways to extract the AOL Address Book, but I always prefer to stick with the sanctioned methods.

Happy Exporting!

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• #12 Comment from ale5940 
  5/27/08 11:01 PM | Permalink

  Easiest thing to do. On your mac go to aol.com Find downloads, click on AOL service assistant and boom, its done. DONT PAY FOR THIS SERVICE!! ITS FREEEEE
• #11 Comment from shlensky 
  11/23/06 2:29 PM | Permalink

  I've posted <a href="http://aulula.blogspot.com/2006/11/vcard-to-csv-conversion-for-mac-users.html">instructions</a> for converting an AOL address book to an Apple Address Book.
• #10 Comment from aptag 
  11/9/06 2:48 PM | Permalink

  For Mac OS X users, the easiest way to transfer an AOL account's email messages, address book, and bookmarks is with the AOL Service Assistant.  As a Mac consultant, I've been using this application for a couple of years and it works quite well.
  
  Download AOL Service Assistant from any of these sites:
  http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/aolserviceassistant.html
  http://wsidecar.apple.com/cgi-bin/nph-reg3rdpty2.pl/product=05988&cat=11&platform=osx&method=sa/AOL_Service_Assistant.dmg
  ftp://download.newaol.com/mac/AOL_Service_Assistant.dmg
  http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/26193
  
• #9 Comment from rosenehm 
  6/3/06 1:51 AM | Permalink

  As of June 2006, Intellisync for desktop apps is no longer available.  Instead, AOL has an arrangement with plaxo.com to sync the AOL address book to the plaxo website.  Plaxo in turn has a toolbar for Outlook which imports from the plaxo website.
  
  The catch is that Plaxo will import only the contacts in the "Uncategorized" folder in the AOL address book.  To import the rest of your AOL address book into Plaxo, you'll have to move the contacts into the "Uncategorized" folder.  With some judicious shuffling of contacts between folders in the AOL address book, you can get your AOL contacts, folder by folder, into Plaxo.  
  
  Frank Denman
• #8 Comment from adamkbEntry Author 
  4/13/06 11:24 AM | Permalink

  tengb,
  
  For OS X use AOL Communicator's export option.
  
  Most email programs will not be able to import the LDIF file it creates, but a quick search of the web will turn up various options for converting the LDIF file into something more useful.