Abe is a small utility designed to read your Address Book data base and turn it into a text field which subsequently can be saved as either a plain text or rtf file. Exporting data to a plain text or rtf file is accomplished by selecting the file option in the File | Export As | … submenu. The saved file can be formatted in the text or word processor of your choice.
Future versions may provide a more sophisticated capacity to print, but this version will provide a hard copy. Better printing results can be obtained by opening the saved file in a text or word processor. Abe provides no capability, at present, to export this data as a spreadsheet. Other utilities have been written to do that.
History: The motivation for this utility came about when my daughter asked for my contacts so she could send out wedding invitations. She did not want to add vCards to her address book, she just wanted a list of names and addresses. This proved surprisingly difficult to do with the Address Book Application.
Upon launching the application, Abe presents a window the top half of which is a chooser panel similar to the one in Address Book. (See below.) You may choose either individual contact names or the groups which you have defined. Select a group and/or contact within a group by clicking on the choice. If you wish to examine the entire group, click the button labeled “Group”. If you wish to examine the contact, click the button labeled “Name”. The Group and Name buttons are located at the bottom of the window. The Help (?) button displays this page.
Multiple choices are fully supported. After choosing a group or contact, you may add contiguous choices by shift clicking. Discontinuous choices can be added by control (⌘) clicking.
You may search the selected group for a particular contact by using the search field at the top of the window. However, this procedure does not search multiple groups. If you need to do this, select the “All Contacts” group and search the entire data base. Similarly, the “All Contacts” group may be used to display the entire database. If the “All Contacts” group is selected, no other group can be chosen at the same time.
Abe is not meant to be a word processor. It does not support opening existing files, multiple documents, nor countless other word processing tools. It does, however, support several formatting features including rulers, fonts, and text alignment. (Thank you Apple software folks!) These attributes can be saved in an rtf formatted file but not as plain text.
If you wish to print out the text, make sure you have selected the appropriate part of the window - usually the lower text field - by pacing the curser in it.
Please note: You are free to use this software at no cost but I will assume no liability for any mishap that may occur. Abe works fine on my MacBook Pro running Mac OS X version 10.6.5. If you are worried about losing your contact data, please back it up before attempting to use this application. (You should probably back stuff up anyway!)
Abe is “tzedakawhere”. I do not charge for this software. You are free to use and distribute it as you see fit. I do, however, retain all rights to the application and the code. If you like Abe, please consider making a donation to your local SPCA or animal shelter. If you don’t have local facilities, consider donating to the Erie County, NY. SPCA. Some nice cat or dog will benefit from your generosity.