HOWTO import Outlook contacts to KAddressBook

Outlook was once the central application to manage my emails, TODOs, appointments and contacts. Now I have migrated to Linux, and KDE Kontact would fulfill the responsibility of PIM. I googled around to figure out how to import legacy Outlook PST to KAddressbook.

Export contacts as vCard from Outlook, then import Sorry, no Windows, no Outlook.

Export contacts via Outport Outport is an open-source utility to export Outlook items. It accesses PST file via MAPI, the native Outlook component. It is useless without Outlook installed.

Read PST via libpst libpst is the open-source utility to convert the Outlook PST to standard Unix mbox and vCard format.

readpst Outlook.pst

Since GBK is used as the built-in text encoding in Outlook, the file names and contents of the generated files by readpst were mess code in my UTF-8 encoded linux box.

ls -la | iconv -f gbk -t utf8

Check the size of Contacts, in my case, it is 26542

cat `fine ./ -size 26542c` | iconv -f gbk -t utf8 > lianxiren.vcf

Then just import the lianxiren.vcf from KAddressBook. Done.