Agent Address Book to Thunderbird

Post by Eric Stevens
I am in the process of converting my email client to Thunderbird from
Agent 8. I have followed the excellent advice of Arthur Conan Doyle in
his post of 26 October 2020 (I had to do some exploring to sort out
subfolders) but I am sticking on his advice to use 'Dawn' to convert
the address book. It just doesn't seem to want to install on 64 bit
Windows 10 build 19043.1110 (21H1).
Does anyone know of a way to export the Agent address book in a form
that will be digestable by Thunderbird.

File/Import and Export has the ability to export the address book as
XML. Reformatting said XML into something Thunderbird can read is a
different matter.

--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
***@ix.netcom.com http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

Eric Stevens

2021-08-04 01:09:22 UTC

On Tue, 03 Aug 2021 11:31:15 -0400, Dennis Lee Bieber

Post by Dennis Lee Bieber

File/Import and Export has the ability to export the address book as
XML. Reformatting said XML into something Thunderbird can read is a
different matter.

I've got that far. I have Corel's Quattro Pro and while it can export
XML it can't import it. Otherwise the problem would be solved.

I was recently intrigued to see that the latest update of Windows
includes Excel. Unfortunately it appears to be a toy version which
cannot import XML either (or export it for that matter).

--
Regards,

Eric Stevens

Ralph Fox

2021-08-03 19:04:07 UTC

1. Use Dawn (the Address Book manager) version 5.4 to export Agent's
address book in LDAP/*.LDIF or CSV format. Thunderbird can read
both LDAP/*.LDIF and CSV formats.

2. You can find Dawn (the Address Book manager) here:

<http://web.archive.org/web/20131030020722/http://mysite.verizon.net/zakharin/software/Dawn/>

<https://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/E-mail/Mail-Utilities/Dawn.shtml>
<https://dawn.software.informer.com/5.4/>
<https://download.cnet.com/Dawn/3000-2367_4-13924.html>
<https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/dawn.html>

3. Dawn (the Address Book manager) needs a one-time configuration to
work with Agent, so it can find Agent's address book.
After installing Dawn, do this:
3.1 Run "Dawn Classic" from the start menu.
3.2 In Dawn, go to "Edit >> Preferences >> Program Preferences"
3.3 Select "Forte Agent" in the left box under "The following will not appear".
3.4 Click the button marked "->" to move Forte Agent to the right box
3.5 An "Open" window will appear
3.6 Navigate to your Agent database, select Agent's address book file "contact.xml"
and click "Open"
3.7 Click "OK" on Dawn's "Preferences" window to save the configuration.

4. To export your Agent address book
4.1 In Dawn, go to "File >> Open >> Open Address Book"
4.2 Select "Forte Agent" from the list, and click 'Next'.
(If you don't see "Forte Agent" listed, you need to do step 3.)
4.3 Go to "File >> Save >> Save as file..."
4.4 Select your file format, which should be one of these two
for Thunderbird to import:
LDAP files *.ldif
Comma Separated Values *.csv

--
Kind regards
Ralph

Eric Stevens

2021-08-04 01:11:04 UTC

1. Use Dawn (the Address Book manager) version 5.4 to export Agent's
address book in LDAP/*.LDIF or CSV format. Thunderbird can read
both LDAP/*.LDIF and CSV formats.

Yes. I've tried that but for some reason it won't install. Hence my
post.

Post by Ralph Fox
<http://web.archive.org/web/20131030020722/http://mysite.verizon.net/zakharin/software/Dawn/>
<https://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/E-mail/Mail-Utilities/Dawn.shtml>
<https://dawn.software.informer.com/5.4/>
<https://download.cnet.com/Dawn/3000-2367_4-13924.html>
<https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/dawn.html>
3. Dawn (the Address Book manager) needs a one-time configuration to
work with Agent, so it can find Agent's address book.
3.1 Run "Dawn Classic" from the start menu.
3.2 In Dawn, go to "Edit >> Preferences >> Program Preferences"
3.3 Select "Forte Agent" in the left box under "The following will not appear".
3.4 Click the button marked "->" to move Forte Agent to the right box
3.5 An "Open" window will appear
3.6 Navigate to your Agent database, select Agent's address book file "contact.xml"
and click "Open"
3.7 Click "OK" on Dawn's "Preferences" window to save the configuration.
4. To export your Agent address book
4.1 In Dawn, go to "File >> Open >> Open Address Book"
4.2 Select "Forte Agent" from the list, and click 'Next'.
(If you don't see "Forte Agent" listed, you need to do step 3.)
4.3 Go to "File >> Save >> Save as file..."
4.4 Select your file format, which should be one of these two
LDAP files *.ldif
Comma Separated Values *.csv

--
Regards,

Eric Stevens

n***@here.invalid

2021-08-04 05:32:14 UTC

1. Use Dawn (the Address Book manager) version 5.4 to export Agent's
address book in LDAP/*.LDIF or CSV format. Thunderbird can read
both LDAP/*.LDIF and CSV formats.

Yes. I've tried that but for some reason it won't install. Hence my
post.

Try installing in comparability mode for windows xp.

Eric Stevens

2021-08-05 03:24:29 UTC

1. Use Dawn (the Address Book manager) version 5.4 to export Agent's
address book in LDAP/*.LDIF or CSV format. Thunderbird can read
both LDAP/*.LDIF and CSV formats.

Yes. I've tried that but for some reason it won't install. Hence my
post.

Try installing in comparability mode for windows xp.

It won't even offer that possibility. The install just won't do
anything.

--
Regards,

Eric Stevens

Toolworker

2023-07-01 16:01:26 UTC

1. Use Dawn (the Address Book manager) version 5.4 to export Agent's
address book in LDAP/*.LDIF or CSV format. Thunderbird can read
both LDAP/*.LDIF and CSV formats.

Yes. I've tried that but for some reason it won't install. Hence my
post.

Try installing in comparability mode for windows xp.

It won't even offer that possibility. The install just won't do
anything.

<http://web.archive.org/web/20131030020722/http://mysite.verizon.net/zakharin/software/Dawn/>
<https://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/E-mail/Mail-Utilities/Dawn.shtml>
<https://dawn.software.informer.com/5.4/>
<https://download.cnet.com/Dawn/3000-2367_4-13924.html>
<https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/dawn.html>
3. Dawn (the Address Book manager) needs a one-time configuration to
work with Agent, so it can find Agent's address book.
3.1 Run "Dawn Classic" from the start menu.
3.2 In Dawn, go to "Edit >> Preferences >> Program Preferences"
3.3 Select "Forte Agent" in the left box under "The following will not appear".
3.4 Click the button marked "->" to move Forte Agent to the right box
3.5 An "Open" window will appear
3.6 Navigate to your Agent database, select Agent's address book file "contact.xml"
and click "Open"
3.7 Click "OK" on Dawn's "Preferences" window to save the configuration.
4. To export your Agent address book
4.1 In Dawn, go to "File >> Open >> Open Address Book"
4.2 Select "Forte Agent" from the list, and click 'Next'.
(If you don't see "Forte Agent" listed, you need to do step 3.)
4.3 Go to "File >> Save >> Save as file..."
4.4 Select your file format, which should be one of these two
LDAP files *.ldif
Comma Separated Values *.csv

--
Regards,
Eric Stevens

I have the same installation problem on Windows 10. Same file sizes, etc. Setup.exe asks permission, then displays a help dialog for Windows Installer. The first time, clicking OK gets a message that the program may not have installed properly. On retry, it doesn't even do that.

Add/Remove Programs doesn't find Dawn.

Any suggestions? Any way to clean it out?

Toolworker

2023-07-03 03:29:16 UTC

Once I realized Excel could read XML files, importing the Agent address book into Thunderbird was fiddly but painless. I claim no expertise but this worked for me:

1) In Agent, File > Export > Address Book -> XML gives an XML file.

2) Edit in Notepad++ (or any regex-capable editor)

3) The <folder>0000xxxx</folder> lines screw up the Excel spreadsheet, so remove them all:

Select Search / Replace
In search field enter "<folder>([A-Z0-9]*)</folder>\n"
Select Regular expression
Replace All, and repeat Replace All until no replacements are made.
Save as an XML file and exit.

(Alternative: I wanted to keep one folder for email addresses that had them, just in case I figure out a way to automatically create filters. To do that:

In search field enter "<email (.*\s*)<folder>([A-Z0-9]*)</folder>"
In replace field enter "<email folder="$2" $1 "
Select Regular expression
Replace All.

Then do step 3 to get rid of multiple folders.)

4) Open the XML file in Excel. (I have Excel 2016.)
It asks As an XML table - click OK
Excel will create a schema - OK.
Ignore the error "Some data was imported as text."

After a couple dozen lines of metadata, the rest should be one address record per line.

I deleted the metadata lines, deleted all the columns up to and including moddate, and sorted on type5 to group the email lists together. I moved the outgoing email lists to another worksheet and entered them by hand. Then I massaged the spreadsheet to get the stuff I wanted to import.

Ralph Fox

2021-08-04 07:40:24 UTC

Post by Ralph Fox
1. Use Dawn (the Address Book manager) version 5.4 to export Agent's
address book in LDAP/*.LDIF or CSV format. Thunderbird can read
both LDAP/*.LDIF and CSV formats.

Yes. I've tried that but for some reason it won't install. Hence my
post.

It installs fine here on Windows 10. Below is how I installed it.
Did you do anything differently?

1.1 The download is a ZIP file "dawn54u.zip"
* size is 870,290 bytes exactly.
* contains six files.

1.2 Unzip the entire ZIP file "dawn54u.zip" into its own
hard drive folder.
You should now have a hard drive folder containing the
six files listed below:

dawn.htm size: 6002 bytes exactly
dawn.msi size: 895488 bytes exactly
dawn.xml size: 6201 bytes exactly
faq.rtf size: 12144 bytes exactly
README.TXT size: 640 bytes exactly
setup.exe size: 77824 bytes exactly

1.3 With all six files present, run the "setup.exe" file.

AFAIK there is nothing else which knows Agent's XML address book format
and can convert it.

--
Kind regards
Ralph

Qui non laborat, non manducat.

Eric Stevens

2021-08-05 03:35:29 UTC

Post by Ralph Fox
1. Use Dawn (the Address Book manager) version 5.4 to export Agent's
address book in LDAP/*.LDIF or CSV format. Thunderbird can read
both LDAP/*.LDIF and CSV formats.

Yes. I've tried that but for some reason it won't install. Hence my
post.

It installs fine here on Windows 10. Below is how I installed it.
Did you do anything differently?
1.1 The download is a ZIP file "dawn54u.zip"
* size is 870,290 bytes exactly.
* contains six files.
1.2 Unzip the entire ZIP file "dawn54u.zip" into its own
hard drive folder.
You should now have a hard drive folder containing the
dawn.htm size: 6002 bytes exactly
dawn.msi size: 895488 bytes exactly
dawn.xml size: 6201 bytes exactly
faq.rtf size: 12144 bytes exactly
README.TXT size: 640 bytes exactly
setup.exe size: 77824 bytes exactly
1.3 With all six files present, run the "setup.exe" file.
AFAIK there is nothing else which knows Agent's XML address book format
and can convert it.

File > Export > Address Book -> XML gives an XML file.

The next step is converting it to CSV, which all kinds of things can
read. As I have already reported I have found
https://www.convertcsv.com/xml-to-csv.htm which makes the conversion
in a blink of an eye. I processed the XML and CSV files in Notepad.
The Address Book import function in Thunderbird reads the CSV file and
enables the order of the fields to be changed to match the CSV file
with TBird's address book.

Some characters did not emerge cleanly from agent with address book
fields containg various = and ? but these were a minor matter to edit.
Once I found out how I found the whole process quite straight forward.

--
Regards,

Eric Stevens

Dennis Lee Bieber

2021-08-05 15:08:58 UTC

Post by Eric Stevens
Some characters did not emerge cleanly from agent with address book
fields containg various = and ? but these were a minor matter to edit.
Once I found out how I found the whole process quite straight forward.

Sounds like UTF8 processed by software that worked in ISO-Latin-x

--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
***@ix.netcom.com http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

Eric Stevens

2021-08-05 00:07:29 UTC