Find and replace or batch change in Address Book?

[vincentpace]

I'm looking to convert a whole slew of telephone numbers in Address Book to make them Skype compliant. There are a variety of find-replace patterns I want to use. One example is an area code in parentheses. For example, I want to change (215) to +1 215. There are thousands of numbers in my address book to change, and manually is not an option.

Address Book doesn't have any way to do this on its own. I checked out Automator but it doesn't have many useful Address Book functions. I dug around for a bit online for an AppleScript that would just go straight to editing the AddressBook.data file, but didn't find anything.

I tried to edit the AddressBook.data file myself using TextWrangler, but when I saved it, AddressBook.data's icon changed from a blank file icon to a plain text file icon and Address Book stalled out while opening, necessitating a force quit. So I reverted to my back up and am no closer to solving the problem.

Is there a way to do a find-replace or a batch change in Address Book, whetever via AppleScript or otherwise?

If not, how can I edit AddressBook.data and save it without it become a text file that Address Book chokes on?

[barhar]

'Is there a way to do a find-replace or a batch change in Address Book, whether via AppleScript ...' - yes.

01. Create a duplicate or archive of your '~/Library/Applicaton Support/Address Book' folder.

Within 'Script Editor' (AppleScript editor application) -
02. Create a list of persons.
03. Cycle through the list of persons, creating a list of each person's phone numbers.
04. Cycle through the individual's phone numbers, modifying each phone number - into the desired format.
05. After cycling through the list of persons, save the address book - which saves all the changes.

[vincentpace]

So then one way to do it is to write an AppleScript. Do you know of anyone who has already done this? Or, at the very least, something similar? I'm pretty sure I could handle the minor changes in such a script (i.e., changing the find-replace patterns) but I wouldn't know how to hammer out from scratch a script that does what you suggest.

[vincentpace]

I also tried to use TextEdit to make textual changes to AddressBook.data with TextEdit's find-replace function. After using this, Address Book did not stall out when opening (although it took a while). Nevertheless, the changes I made were not reproduced in Address Book. Does Address Book try to back up data from somewhere else? Why is it that textual changes made directly in AddressBook.data and saved by TextEdit did not exist after opening the file with Address Book?

Is there a way to textually edit the AddressBook.data file, save it, and then open it in Address Book with the edits that you made?

[joshfree]

Did you ever get this issue solved? I have a very similar problem and it drives me nuts. I like the integration of Address Book, but hate the crude data entry and lack of batch editing. Any ideas?

[vincentpace]

Nope, I'm still looking for a good way to do this. Let me know if you come up with anything.