From cf0c199dd2a3f940b9665ea7f13926f1cea0f435 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: jowj Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2019 13:38:10 -0500 Subject: [PATCH] Create vcards post --- _posts/2019-04-18-vcards.md | 89 +++++++++++ _site/index.html | 4 +- _site/personal/2019/04/15/friendsgiving.html | 4 +- .../personal/2019/04/15/lt_thanksgiving.html | 4 +- _site/personal/2019/04/15/rad_boys_only.html | 4 +- _site/personal/2019/04/18/vcards.html | 141 ++++++++++++++++++ _site/personal/index.html | 6 +- _site/projects/2019/04/15/agares.html | 4 +- .../04/15/hosting_static_sites_on_s3.html | 4 +- _site/projects/2019/04/15/mojojojo_bot.html | 4 +- _site/projects/2019/04/15/workingcopy.html | 4 +- _site/projects/index.html | 2 +- 12 files changed, 252 insertions(+), 18 deletions(-) create mode 100644 _posts/2019-04-18-vcards.md create mode 100644 _site/personal/2019/04/18/vcards.html diff --git a/_posts/2019-04-18-vcards.md b/_posts/2019-04-18-vcards.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6589976 --- /dev/null +++ b/_posts/2019-04-18-vcards.md @@ -0,0 +1,89 @@ +--- +title: vcards +categories: personal +--- + +this past week my dad and I helped my grandmother with a few Computer Things. my grandfather died at the end of last year and the process of getting "Computer Things" to a usable state for my grandmother was pretty rough. + +One of the things that was unexpectedly frustrating was transferring stuff (photos, contacts, whatever) from my granddad's account to my grandmothers. as near as i can tell, a different family member had been helping my grandmother and closed several of my grandfather's old accounts. including email accounts and /iCloud/ accounts. + +normally, transferring contacts from one persons icloud to another's is pretty straight forward (there's an export button on icloud.com), but if you can't succesfully auth to icloud it gets a lot trickier. there's probably a few ways to do this, but the tack i ended up taking was: + +1. find a totally different source for the contacts (in this case, my grandfather's outlook 2010 install) +2. export those contacts to vcards +3. import those vcards to icloud.com under the new account + +That is the bones of what happened, but the details kept screwing me over. + +first, outlook 2010 contact exports by default come out in an outlook specific format (.msg) that cannot be imported into icloud. ok well fine, surely there's a straight forward way to deal with that. + +good news: you can directly export contacts from outlook to vcf +bad news: its fucking hidden behind a "send as business card" dialogue option that is fucking unintuitive. thanks 2010 microsoft. +worse news: it sends a very old .vcf format, 2.1. The minimum I could get working with icloud was 3.0 + +ok well surely you can convert the 2.1 version to 3.0? in fact, what is even the difference? here is some wikipedia examples: +``` +BEGIN:VCARD +VERSION:2.1 +N:Gump;Forrest;;Mr. +FN:Forrest Gump +ORG:Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. +TITLE:Shrimp Man +PHOTO;GIF:http://www.example.com/dir_photos/my_photo.gif +TEL;WORK;VOICE:(111) 555-1212 +TEL;HOME;VOICE:(404) 555-1212 +ADR;WORK;PREF:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America +LABEL;WORK;PREF;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:100 Waters Edge=0D= + =0ABaytown\, LA 30314=0D=0AUnited States of America +ADR;HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America +LABEL;HOME;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:42 Plantation St.=0D=0A= + Baytown, LA 30314=0D=0AUnited States of America +EMAIL:forrestgump@example.com +REV:20080424T195243Z +END:VCARD +``` + +``` +BEGIN:VCARD +VERSION:3.0 +N:Gump;Forrest;;Mr.; +FN:Forrest Gump +ORG:Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. +TITLE:Shrimp Man +PHOTO;VALUE=URI;TYPE=GIF:http://www.example.com/dir_photos/my_photo.gif +TEL;TYPE=WORK,VOICE:(111) 555-1212 +TEL;TYPE=HOME,VOICE:(404) 555-1212 +ADR;TYPE=WORK,PREF:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America +LABEL;TYPE=WORK,PREF:100 Waters Edge\nBaytown\, LA 30314\nUnited States of America +ADR;TYPE=HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America +LABEL;TYPE=HOME:42 Plantation St.\nBaytown\, LA 30314\nUnited States of America +EMAIL:forrestgump@example.com +REV:2008-04-24T19:52:43Z +END:VCARD +``` + +the thing that caused most of the issues for the contact set I was working on was the ~TEL;~ lines. the type declarations, when present, needed to be altered. to fix this is pretty simple: + +``` +cat /path/to/dir/* > all-outlook-contacts.vcf +sed -e 's/TEL;/TEL;TYPE=/g' -e 's/VERSION:2.1/VERSION:3.0/g' ../new-contacts/all-outlook-contacts.vcf > ../new-contacts/all-CLEANED.vcf +``` + +yes thats right, ' i am very 3 now ' is most of the work lmao. this worked, but I still couldn't import the vcf files to icloud - it would think for a while, then error saying that at least one of the entries was unreadable. i skimmed through the file visually and found some lines that were interesting - on a few cards there was a LANGUAGE declaration: + +``` +cat ../new-contacts/all-outlook-contacts.vcf | grep =en +>N;LANGUAGE=en-us:last first +>N;LANGUAGE=en-us:last first +>N;LANGUAGE=en-us:last first +>N;LANGUAGE=en-us:last first +``` + +wtf is that, that isn't mentioned in the spec until vcards 4.0 + +my best guess is that this is just some Fancy Colour from outlook specifically, because nobody else was talking about this based on quick google searches. I just removed it from these 4 cards and went on to import them to icloud succesfully. + +the lesson i learned during this process is: +- don't close people's accounts right away; make sure everything is prepared before accounts are closed. +- by the time i die i should establish a fucking runbook to go over the necessary steps for people who aren't technically inclined +- open formats are great diff --git a/_site/index.html b/_site/index.html index f860125..d73ceba 100644 --- a/_site/index.html +++ b/_site/index.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ - + diff --git a/_site/personal/2019/04/15/friendsgiving.html b/_site/personal/2019/04/15/friendsgiving.html index 8501cb4..193d245 100644 --- a/_site/personal/2019/04/15/friendsgiving.html +++ b/_site/personal/2019/04/15/friendsgiving.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ - + diff --git a/_site/personal/2019/04/15/lt_thanksgiving.html b/_site/personal/2019/04/15/lt_thanksgiving.html index 5cc011d..42de3f0 100644 --- a/_site/personal/2019/04/15/lt_thanksgiving.html +++ b/_site/personal/2019/04/15/lt_thanksgiving.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ - + diff --git a/_site/personal/2019/04/15/rad_boys_only.html b/_site/personal/2019/04/15/rad_boys_only.html index 2744ca7..bd59bdf 100644 --- a/_site/personal/2019/04/15/rad_boys_only.html +++ b/_site/personal/2019/04/15/rad_boys_only.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ - + diff --git a/_site/personal/2019/04/18/vcards.html b/_site/personal/2019/04/18/vcards.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc9c76b --- /dev/null +++ b/_site/personal/2019/04/18/vcards.html @@ -0,0 +1,141 @@ + + + + + + + + + + + + +vcards | josiah ledbetter + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+
+ +
+

josiah ledbetter

+
+
+ + +
+
+
+

this past week my dad and I helped my grandmother with a few Computer Things. my grandfather died at the end of last year and the process of getting “Computer Things” to a usable state for my grandmother was pretty rough.

+ +

One of the things that was unexpectedly frustrating was transferring stuff (photos, contacts, whatever) from my granddad’s account to my grandmothers. as near as i can tell, a different family member had been helping my grandmother and closed several of my grandfather’s old accounts. including email accounts and /iCloud/ accounts.

+ +

normally, transferring contacts from one persons icloud to another’s is pretty straight forward (there’s an export button on icloud.com), but if you can’t succesfully auth to icloud it gets a lot trickier. there’s probably a few ways to do this, but the tack i ended up taking was:

+ +
    +
  1. find a totally different source for the contacts (in this case, my grandfather’s outlook 2010 install)
    2. +
  2. export those contacts to vcards
    3. +
  3. import those vcards to icloud.com under the new account
    4. +
+ +

That is the bones of what happened, but the details kept screwing me over.

+ +

first, outlook 2010 contact exports by default come out in an outlook specific format (.msg) that cannot be imported into icloud. ok well fine, surely there’s a straight forward way to deal with that.

+ +

good news: you can directly export contacts from outlook to vcf +bad news: its fucking hidden behind a “send as business card” dialogue option that is fucking unintuitive. thanks 2010 microsoft. +worse news: it sends a very old .vcf format, 2.1. The minimum I could get working with icloud was 3.0

+ +

ok well surely you can convert the 2.1 version to 3.0? in fact, what is even the difference? here is some wikipedia examples:

+
BEGIN:VCARD
+VERSION:2.1
+N:Gump;Forrest;;Mr.
+FN:Forrest Gump
+ORG:Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
+TITLE:Shrimp Man
+PHOTO;GIF:http://www.example.com/dir_photos/my_photo.gif
+TEL;WORK;VOICE:(111) 555-1212
+TEL;HOME;VOICE:(404) 555-1212
+ADR;WORK;PREF:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
+LABEL;WORK;PREF;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:100 Waters Edge=0D=
+ =0ABaytown\, LA 30314=0D=0AUnited States of America
+ADR;HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
+LABEL;HOME;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:42 Plantation St.=0D=0A=
+ Baytown, LA 30314=0D=0AUnited States of America
+EMAIL:forrestgump@example.com
+REV:20080424T195243Z
+END:VCARD
+
+ +
BEGIN:VCARD
+VERSION:3.0
+N:Gump;Forrest;;Mr.;
+FN:Forrest Gump
+ORG:Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
+TITLE:Shrimp Man
+PHOTO;VALUE=URI;TYPE=GIF:http://www.example.com/dir_photos/my_photo.gif
+TEL;TYPE=WORK,VOICE:(111) 555-1212
+TEL;TYPE=HOME,VOICE:(404) 555-1212
+ADR;TYPE=WORK,PREF:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
+LABEL;TYPE=WORK,PREF:100 Waters Edge\nBaytown\, LA 30314\nUnited States of America
+ADR;TYPE=HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
+LABEL;TYPE=HOME:42 Plantation St.\nBaytown\, LA 30314\nUnited States of America
+EMAIL:forrestgump@example.com
+REV:2008-04-24T19:52:43Z
+END:VCARD
+
+ +

the thing that caused most of the issues for the contact set I was working on was the ~TEL;~ lines. the type declarations, when present, needed to be altered. to fix this is pretty simple:

+ +
cat /path/to/dir/* > all-outlook-contacts.vcf
+sed -e 's/TEL;/TEL;TYPE=/g' -e 's/VERSION:2.1/VERSION:3.0/g' ../new-contacts/all-outlook-contacts.vcf > ../new-contacts/all-CLEANED.vcf
+
+ +

yes thats right, ‘ i am very 3 now ‘ is most of the work lmao. this worked, but I still couldn’t import the vcf files to icloud - it would think for a while, then error saying that at least one of the entries was unreadable. i skimmed through the file visually and found some lines that were interesting - on a few cards there was a LANGUAGE declaration:

+ +
cat ../new-contacts/all-outlook-contacts.vcf | grep =en
+>N;LANGUAGE=en-us:last first
+>N;LANGUAGE=en-us:last first
+>N;LANGUAGE=en-us:last first
+>N;LANGUAGE=en-us:last first
+
+ +

wtf is that, that isn’t mentioned in the spec until vcards 4.0

+ +

my best guess is that this is just some Fancy Colour from outlook specifically, because nobody else was talking about this based on quick google searches. I just removed it from these 4 cards and went on to import them to icloud succesfully.

+ +

the lesson i learned during this process is:

+
    +
  • don’t close people’s accounts right away; make sure everything is prepared before accounts are closed.
    • +
  • by the time i die i should establish a fucking runbook to go over the necessary steps for people who aren’t technically inclined
    • +
  • open formats are great
    • +
+ +
+ +
+ +
+ +
+
+ + + + diff --git a/_site/personal/index.html b/_site/personal/index.html index d1897d7..ab39a10 100644 --- a/_site/personal/index.html +++ b/_site/personal/index.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ - + diff --git a/_site/projects/2019/04/15/hosting_static_sites_on_s3.html b/_site/projects/2019/04/15/hosting_static_sites_on_s3.html index 6d15664..0a4aef6 100644 --- a/_site/projects/2019/04/15/hosting_static_sites_on_s3.html +++ b/_site/projects/2019/04/15/hosting_static_sites_on_s3.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ - + diff --git a/_site/projects/2019/04/15/mojojojo_bot.html b/_site/projects/2019/04/15/mojojojo_bot.html index 970d9de..a19ccf3 100644 --- a/_site/projects/2019/04/15/mojojojo_bot.html +++ b/_site/projects/2019/04/15/mojojojo_bot.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ - + diff --git a/_site/projects/2019/04/15/workingcopy.html b/_site/projects/2019/04/15/workingcopy.html index b14ea4e..14f20b7 100644 --- a/_site/projects/2019/04/15/workingcopy.html +++ b/_site/projects/2019/04/15/workingcopy.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ - + diff --git a/_site/projects/index.html b/_site/projects/index.html index acef86a..1a995df 100644 --- a/_site/projects/index.html +++ b/_site/projects/index.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ - +