The only import/export format in common between Palm Desktop and Thunderbird was CSV. I did a search and couldn't find any existing script to convert between the two, so I downloaded the Text::CSV perl module and started writing a script to read in a CSV-exported Thunderbird address book and save it with fields reordered per Palm Desktop's expectations. I had it half-way written when I discovered there's a un-indexed extension to Thunderbird that can export an address book in vCard format called More Functions for Address Book.
So I tried it out and found that it works fairly well. The caveats to this approach besides the manual aspect to it are:
- Palm Desktop doesn't import birthday
- The extension doesn't export anniversary
- Palm Desktop imports duplicate cards as new entries, so have to delete all entries, and then import
The first two are not a big deal but the implications of #3 is that attributes associated with entries in my phone, like custom ring tones, are lost, which sucks because I'd like to take advantage of that feature of my phone. I may have to switch my mode of operation and have my phone/Palm Desktop be my master address book, but so far I'm resisting that because:
- I don't want my address book to be controlled by proprietary software
- I like Thunderbird's interface for managing address book cards better than Palm Desktop (although neither of them are great).
I also found out there's a method for defining a custom ordering for fields for CSV import in Palm Desktop, further eliminating the need to write a CSV converter script in the first place.
