How can I merge Address Book contacts from a G4 hard drive to a MacBook?

[AVR2]

A friend's G4 iMac has died - possibly with a fried mainboard - and she didn't have a backup of her Address Book, which is a big problem for her. I've pulled the hard drive and using an IDE-to-USB adapter on my MBP have confirmed that it's still working.

We need to merge the Address Book details from the G4 HD into the Address Book on her MacBook - so at the risk of asking a dumb question, what's the best way of doing this?

I've just taken a look at the Address Book import options, and it looks like "Import... Address Book archive" might be what we want, but do you need to have specifically exported an archive first (which of course she hasn't, and won't be able to do anyway), or by "archive" does it mean "older version of Address Book"? I don't want to try it without getting some kind of clarification first, just in case it wipes the existing contacts from her MacBook rather than simply merge the ones from the old drive.

Any suggestions gratefully received

 

[speakerwizard]

thats right, you need to boot off of the drive ( hold alt key when powering up) and then export from address book though i think you can still only boot from firewire drives (it might be different these days)

 

[kfordham281]

If you can't boot of the drive I'm afraid I don't know what to say. I've exported my address book archive twice and re-imported it and it's easy as pie. But then again I had the archive already done. Can you boot of the drive as suggested by speakerwizard? You can boot off USB and Firewire on an Intel Mac but I'm not sure about booting a G4 drive on Intel. I've never tried that.

She has no backup anywhere? She hasn't synced her contacts to .Mac, an iPhone, an iPod, or anywhere else?

 

[BullBoyKennels]

you can also use BackUp from apple to back it up & restore it to another machine. Well at least it is another option for you.

 

[NeoMayhem]

Easy:

1. Export current address book on the macbook
2. Copy USER/Library/Application Support/AddressBook from the g4 HD to App Support on the macbook, overwriting the new contacts with the old ones
3. Open Address Book and import the file you exported a few minutes ago, now you will have both merged perfectly.

 

[AVR2]

NeoMayhem, you're a star

Thanks to everyone for the other suggestions, but booting from the G4 drive was a non-option as we don't have access to a working PowerPC Mac for that, and of course an Intel Mac will not boot from a drive containing a non-Intel version of the OS.

 

[kfordham281]

Easy:

1. Export current address book on the macbook
2. Copy USER/Library/Application Support/AddressBook from the g4 HD to App Support on the macbook, overwriting the new contacts with the old ones
3. Open Address Book and import the file you exported a few minutes ago, now you will have both merged perfectly.

That was easy, good to know.

 

[Wheetiia]

Any more help?

I found this discussion and while all this is awesome and I have exported my archives, but the importing doesn't actually work.

Address book wants to replace all previous contacts if you try to import. Is there a way to actually merge two address books?

Thanks!