AOLeave - Address Book
To use the Address Book tool you must save your Address Book from the AOL interface. To do this, go to the 'Mail Center' menu and select 'Address Book'. Click on the 'Save/Replace' icon. Select the option 'Save the Address Book for your current screen name.' and click on the OK button. The default is to save the file as "Address Book.pfc" in your 'download' folder. Change the name to something like 'addbook.pfc'. Place a copy of the Java program, 'AddBook.class', in the folder you saved 'addbook.pfc' to. To run the program open a DOS window and CD to the download directory.
The command to run the program is;
java AddBook addbook.pfc addbook.csv
Please note, this command is case sensitive - type it exactly as shown, or cut and paste it.
This command starts java and runs the program AddBook.class, which reads the file you saved (addbook.pfc) and creates an output file (addbook.csv). This file (addbook.csv) can be read into Outlook and Outlook Express, or any email client that can import comma separated files.
Here is the program;
Download the Address Book program, AddBook.class v1.03 (4,243 bytes)
Be sure not to change the filename. If you do it will not work. It must be named 'AddBook.class' and this also is case sensitive.
A note about groups
AOL's implementation of groups (perhaps better referred to as distribution lists) is pretty lame. There is no way to easily add an existing contact to a group. It is quite easy to (inadvertently) create a group containing only one contact.
I was originally inclined to ignore AOL groups altogether, because they did not appear to be very useful. Then I discovered a user (Beta Bill) had many one contact groups. Also another user (thanks Scott for your suggestions) had some very large groups which would be very time consuming to recreate.
Groups are handled in this fashion;
If a group contains only one address it is saved as one contact. The First Name field is set to the group name, and the email field is set.
Groups with more than on address are saved as multiple contacts. The First Name is set to the email address, and the Department field is set to the group name. I leave it to you to recreate your distribution lists in your email client software.