Aol has no export feature from what I read, here is how 1 person did it see the link,

I also suggest you Google "EXPORT AOL ADDRESSBOOK"

It's possible others here may have done it, so wait for other replies as well..

Here is a link that might be useful: exporting_an_aol_address_book

zamzar may make that easier because once you get your original file from aol you can then go to zamzar browse to that file and have zamzar convert it to a CSV file which you can then use in gmail.
This however may be one of the easier ways to go about it
quote:
"Open a Yahoo email account. they have a feature to import the address book from aol. they also have the ability to export to csv file."
Personally that is what I would do it is the easy way to go and if you don't ever use that yahoo account no biggie it served the purpose.

these may help also
AOLeave - Address Book

also from what I understand you can use the aolsync feature also to sync your AOL with outlook or outlook express which would allow you to then get a usable address book file
http://aolsync.aol.com/main.do
this article talks about the aol sync
Copying an AOL Address Book on a Windows PC

I happened to find these directions on how to save your aol faves to use in firefox should you or anyone need that.
Quote:
I solved the AOL 9 Favorites export!!!

1. Login to AOL from a regular (ie, firefox, safari) at http://www.aol.com.

2. Go to "my aol", usually in the top left corner

3. When prompted to "Import AOL Class Favorite Places", say "yes". this imports your AOL favorites.

4. At the bottom of the menu, there's an "export" function which will export to bookmarks.html.

5. Import the file into your favorite browser and clean-up all the AOL specific stuff that you don't want to keep."

Nice,

Raven..

I thought I would post the link to this article here it may help some with their various email accounts.
Managing multiple e-mail accounts

Thanks Raven and Zep. I have a yahoo email account (which I needed for various listservs I'm on) - so that sounds like an easy option.

A few days ago I got Thunderbird. I haven't had any time to explore it and see what it could do - but I did use it to get all my AOL saved emails (in various folders) saved to my pc. That was a success. I followed the steps mentioned in another thread last week (thank you to that post - my apologies I can't remember who posted it).

So I now have Thunderbird - and perhaps that is another way to get the address book saved.

I probably won't get to this until the weekend. Once I get my AOL address book converted to .csv files, if I need more help getting it into gmail, I'll give a holler.

Thanks.
Lynn.

Okay. So I've done everything else I need to do to dump AOL. I uninstalled McAfee from 3 computers and installed Avast. I got all my saved AOL emails in Thunderbird. I've got any new AOL emails being forwarded to Gmail.

Then I went to Import my AOL address book into yahoo. When I check my Yahoo account, it listed almost 3000 contacts. Now when I used to look at my address book in AOL, it was nowhere near 3000 contacts. I never added it up, but I would have guessed a few hundred. I can't imagine sorting through 3000 addresses. And many of the ones I want, I might not even recognize. For instance, we rent a beach apartment out during the summer. So I have people in my contacts that have rented or inquired about renting - and I would not recognize most of those addresses.

I probably don't have to give more illustrations - but I wonder if anyone has any ideas how I imported 3000. Perhaps it looked at every address that ever sent an email through one of several listservs I'm on (this includes a neighborhood listserv of 7000).

Is there anyway to reconstruct just the addresses that were in my AOL address book? This Yahoo retrieval seemed to have dug deeper into the recesses of my AOL mail than I intended - and more than I can deal with.

Thanks.
Lynn.

I looked back at my AOL address book to see if it had 2800+ entries. It doesn't seem to - but it's so badly organized (just one more reason to dump AOL) that it's tough to tell as I'm scrolling just how many there are. There's no order to it, and no discrete pages - so I just keep scrolling down - but I don't think it's 2800.

I also looked more closely at the Yahoo list. It's nice and organized -and gives a choice of ways to organize. Very nice - although the ultimate destination for this address book is Gmail (I hope Gmail is as nice to organize).
I noticed that this list included every inquiry I ever made about an item on craigslist (sales...@craigslist...) - I know I don't need those contacts). But some of the others are harder to discern. Is there a way to find out more about their origin - or date entered - or last used - or whether I wrote to these folks or just received email from them. I could do this in Yahoo or AOL - whichever has that data - if its' even possible.

Then my other question is - now that it's in Yahoo - how do I get it to Gmail. I don't see where to export to .csv file - and don't know what that kind of file is. When I do export to .csv file, how do I get it to GMail - and do I leave it in .csv format or convert it to something else. Sorry for the simple questions, but this is all unknown terrain for me.

Thanks.
Lynn.

I will answer the parts I can, CSV is comma separated Value

Importing contacts by CSV
Importing CSV files

Exporting contacts from other mail providers

at the top of each of those pages you can find the search box for Gmail help it is extremely good for finding info.

I am going to add this because some people were having a problem and doing it this way seemed to make it work this is from the gmail forums
"In the gmail account you are trying to import your contacts to, go to
the top right portion of your screen and click the button that says
OLDER VERSION. This will give you the older version of gmail. Then,
click on the contacts button. You will be taken to the contacts
screen. Click import. It should work.

Once it all imports and your contacts are there, go back to the top
right and click NEWER VERSION. "

Well - after 1 1/2 hours of playing around with this, I feel like a complete dummie. I have resolved myself to having nearly 3000 contacts to import to my Gmail contact list. But I can't get anywhere.

I have my AOl address book imported into Yahoo. When I try to import into GMAIL (doesn't matter if I use the older or newer version), it asks where to import from - and I can't find the .csv files. I have no idea where they'd be. Whe I select browse, it takes me to my documents - and it's not there. If I try to browse someplace else, I can't find it.

It also occurred to me that it may not be in .csv form yet - but when I try to export from one Yahoo account (to say, thunderbird or another yahoo account) - it suggests I can export as csv file - I click on ("Yahoo! CSV: export) - and then it brings up a screen that says:

you have chosen to open yahoo_ab.csv file from http://address.yahoo.com. What should firefox do with this file? My choices are "save file" or "open with: browse". If I click "save file" - I don't think anything is happening. And I wouldn't know what to select if I used open with ....

Going back to GMAIL import, I have tried entering various names that I've seen in Yahoo mail. Including "yahoo_ab.csv" - but again, nothing happens.

I had a similar problem trying to import into thunderbird - I simply don't seem to be able to locate the files to do it. I'd rather go directliy from yahoo to gmail (without going through thunderbird - bc. from what I was reading, thunderbird does not maintain my address groups - and that is important to me. In fact, if I could only import my groups - that is most critical part).

I'm sorry I can't be more articulate about where I'm getting hung up. I have truly never felt so in the dark dealing with computer things (even as untechy as I am, I've had a little more grasp than this).

Thanks.
Lynn.

If they are .csv files, here's how to find them. Click Start > Search > files and folders. Type *.csv in the search box and do the search.

Hi, Bob. Thanks - that did the trick. I had converted the address book (twice) into csv files. I just had no idea it had been done and where it was being stored. So I searched - found it- and entered it where Gmail asked me what files to import. That was simple.

The process did undo all my groups - but I can print those out from AOL and manually recreate.

Every time I do another step in freeing myself up, it is a confirmation of how awful AOL is and how much liberating it will be to be rid of it. (I'll still keep a free account - so those who try to contact me from my old address can still do so).

Thanks everyone.
Lynn.

Lynn you may have your firefox set up to automatically put any downloaded file to one specific location rather than asking you where you want it to be put, you can change that in firefox so that anytime you choose save file it comes up with the browse box so you can browse directly to where you want the file to be saved to, I prefer this because I put differnt file types in different areas.

it is under tools options on the main tab look at downloads and you can either have it put in one area or check where it says always ask me where to save files.

Thanks, raven. I didn't know that - it was set at default of putting all in my desktop. Now I set it up to ask me where to put it. (Gee - I wonder what other goodies wound up in my desktop - a place I never look).