The Automator tip of the week walks you through one way to extract the contact information from Address book and put it into a format that you can upload to Gmail.

Gmail accepts csv files for importing contacts. Unfortunately Address Book does not export directly to csv. Why it doesn’t is a puzzle in it self, but thankfully we can get the same results through Automator with the use of some Microsoft Office actions.

To create a csv file Automator of your contacts in Address Book add the following actions to a workflow:

1. Find People in Address Book, Set Whose to Name, is not equal to, and then use * in the input field - This tells automator to look through all the names in your address book and return everyone that doesn’t have a * in their name.
2. Get Contact Information, Export Format: Spreadsheet (tabs) - This gathers all the information about each contact and puts it into a standard format we can work with.
3. New Text File - I named it contacts.txt and saved it to my desktop - This will write the information from address book to a text file
4. Import Text Files to Excel Workbook - Select New Workbook and mark the delimiters as Tab
5. Save Excel Workbooks - Save Workbooks as contacts, on the desktop and select CSV(Comma Delimited) as the format

Import Address Book CSV File to Gmail

If everything was constructed correctly you should be able to run the workflow and 2 files will be written to your desktop. From here we can import our contacts.csv file into Gmail.

To import your contacts.csv to gmail:

1. Login to Gmail
2. Click Contacts
3. Click Import
4. Choose your contacts.csv file and click Import
5. Follow the final instructions from Gmail and verify your contacts imported correctly

Now that we’ve showed how to complete this process with Automator, there is also an application - A to G that was built do extract Address Book Contacts and place them in a CSV file.

Importing Contacts from Gmail into Address Book is a bit easier.

The thing that makes Safari great is the combination of fast and sleek capabilities as well as the significant number of features that makes the browser unique when compared to others available.

In previous articles we’ve discussed a number of unique features that help you enhance your Safari experience. Additionally, Safari syncs great with Apple mobile devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch by sharing your favorite bookmarks.

While Firefox has the capabilities to restore a browsing session, it lacks the capability of re-opening websites on browser windows that you’ve just closed.

Safari on the other hand makes this is. In fact, Safari allows you to open the last window closed as well as all the windows from your last browsing session.

Both options are located under History on the menu bar. Select History, and then either “Reopen Last Closed Window” or “Reopen All Windows From Last Session”

I often utilize these features when I jump around within Safari windows. I close windows to often only to realize later there was more information I needed to gather from the website I was viewing. These Safari features make my browsing experience that more enjoyable.

In my recent efforts to get apache2 and mysql up and running on my iMac I often needed to view the hidden files in Finder. I was lucky enough to stumble across a hint that showed me exactly the commands I needed to run in terminal to view all the hidden files in Finder.

After viewing and hiding these files over and over again I realized that this would be a perfect plugin for Finder. I launched automator and found the 1 action item I needed to show and hide files in finder.

I selected “Run Shell Script” from the Utilities library and dragged it over to my workflow. I added the following text to the workflow:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

Once the code was included in the step, I saved the workflow as a Finder plugin: ShowHidden. Now to view the hidden files in finder, I simply right click (command + click) in Finder, select More, Automator, and then ShowHidden. Finder closes and then re-opens with all the hidden files and folders viewable.

To hide the files again, I created another workflow with the same “Run Shell Script” action and entered in this text:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder

I saved it as a Finder plugin, HideHidden. To hide the files and folders again, righ click (command + click) in Finder, select More, Automator, and then HideHidden. Finder will close and re-open with the files and folders hidden again.

Now there is no need to open Terminal to view OS X hidden files in Finder.

Every so often you’ll come across a CD or DVD image (.ISO) file that you need to burn to Disk. Although the capability isn’t used often, it is something that can be done with just the software included in OS X.

To burn a CD or DVD from an .iso file:

1. Insert your CD/DVD into your Mac
2. Add the blank disk to Finder
3. Open the application Disk Utility
4. Select File, and then Open Disk Image. Select the .iso file you’d like to burn
5. Select the .iso file from the list of volumes
6. Click the Burn Button on the top of Disk Utility

Disk Utility should start burning the image to the CD or DVD you inserted into the computer. At times, I’ve received notice from OS X that the process was unsuccessful only to stick the disk into a computer and have it work fine, so be sure to test the new CD/DVD after the burning is complete.

[Via - macosxhints.com]

If you’re like me, you use Google often to find everything and anything on the web. But despite how powerful Google is sometimes you’d like to focus your search a bit more than the standard search allows.

As a blogger about Mac hardware, software, hints, and news I often navigate through the web to help me find interesting material to spark my creative mind into the next new hint, tip, or more.

To help me with my searches, I often want to look at just Mac related sites. And now, Google has included this capability on their Mac page.

Head over to Google Mac (http://www.google.com/mac.html), type in what you’re searching for and click the Search Mac Sites button to bring back results from Apple related websites.