Backing up KAdressBook Contacts

English Applications
#1

Hello there.

First of all, I use opensuse 12.1 and kde 4.8.2.

I have a doubt that I guess a lot of us had had before, but I haven’t found a satisfactory solution :(.

I’d like to backup my contacts from KAdressBook. I have found that contacts data might be at:

  1. $HOME/.local/share/contacts

or

  1. $HOME/.kde/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf

I’ve tried to find any data on these paths, but in (1) contacts directory doesn’t exist and in (2) I found seven files: std.vcf_1, std.vcf_2 … std.vcf_7 files and lock directory. Both std.vcf_* files and lock directory are empty. Anyway, I tried to copy kabc directory to other kde installation, but didn’t work and couldn’t recover my contacts.

I hope you culd help me, or give me a solution (ex. a backup software that “knows” where important data is found).

Thanks in advance! :slight_smile:

#2

In “Contacts” go to File/Export and you can export the contacts to a number of different file formats, such as CSV, LDIF, etc.

#3

gabe1986 wrote:

>
> Hello there.
>
> First of all, I use opensuse 12.1 and kde 4.8.2.
>
> I have a doubt that I guess a lot of us had had before, but I haven’t
> found a satisfactory solution :(.
>
> I’d like to backup my contacts from KAdressBook. I have found that
> contacts data might be at:
>
> 1) $HOME/.local/share/contacts
>
> or
>
> 2) $HOME/.kde/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf
>
> I’ve tried to find any data on these paths, but in (1) contacts
> directory doesn’t exist and in (2) I found seven files: std.vcf_1,
> std.vcf_2 … std.vcf_7 files and lock directory. Both std.vcf_*
> files
> and lock directory are empty. Anyway, I tried to copy kabc directory
> to other kde installation, but didn’t work and couldn’t recover my
> contacts.
>
> I hope you culd help me, or give me a solution (ex. a backup software
> that “knows” where important data is found).
>
> Thanks in advance! :slight_smile:
>
>
The way I’ve been doing it is:

  1. Go into Contacts under Kontact
  2. Select File → Export → (Chose method you want) I use CSV
  3. Then Select the addressbook to save (Personal Addressbook)
    and tell it where to save it.
    This gives me a csv with all my contacts. I can then open it with
    LibreOffice Calc (or other spreadsheet.

To restore the address boot

  1. go into Contact
    2 File → Import → type file (CSV)
  2. Tell it where file was saved. After import your contacts
    should all be there.
    Only problems I have ran into it does not save the Groups I created
    (Distribution Lists), I have to rebuild them.

I back up my home directory to an external disk. This back will back up
the csv I created.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Russ
openSUSE 12.1(3.1.10-1.9-desktop x86_64)|KDE Platform Version
4.8.2 (4.8.2 “release 494”|Intel core2duo 2.5 MHZ,|8GB
DDR3|GeForce 8400GS(NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-295.40)

#4

I know it might sound foolish, I was looking for the exact place where contacts are saved. I supposed it’s a very hidden place. So I’ll follow your recomendations, for now is the quicklest way to do it.

Thanks!!

#5

gabe1986 wrote:

>
> I know it might sound foolish, I was looking for the exact place where
> contacts are saved. I supposed it’s a very hidden place. So I’ll follow
> your recomendations, for now is the quicklest way to do it.
>

/home/user/.local/share/contacts/ or
/home/user/.kde4/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf

depenting addressbook type.

–
Viljo

#6

Thanks very much!, I was playing for a while, and I discovered that depends on the adressbook type :slight_smile:

So this solved my question!