Import vCard into Sk98 ?? 3

[garybritt]

SK98 is supposed to allow vCard import into the contacts folder. Help says to drag and drop the vCard onto the contacts. Doesn't seem to work. What's the trick or is this a bug?

Thanks,

Gary Britt

 

[james33]

Dear Gary,
Does the Field match dialog not come up?



Regards Jim
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[garybritt]

Hi James,

Nope, nothing happens. Does it come up for you? Where are you draging and droping from and to?

Thanks,

Gary

 

[james33]

Dear Garybritt,
if you look in Help|Index|VCard
then
Using VCard and VCalendar:
it says the following:

To import a vCard object into Contacts view,

1. Make sure Contacts view is active.
2. Drag and drop the object into Contacts view.
3. The Match Cardfile Fields dialog box opens. Match the fields from the vCard object with the fields in the cardfile, and click OK. Any unmatched fields will appear last in the card.

To import a vCalendar object into Calendar view,
also check out:
Introducing vCard and vCalendar
Sidekick 98 supports vCard and vCalendar, which are univeral business card and calendar formats that work across different computers, operating systems, and communication technologies. This cross-platform, cross-application support lets you share contact and scheduling information more easily over the Internet.
You can use the vCard and vCalendar support in Sidekick 98 to drag and drop vCard and vCalendar objects into the Contacts and Daily Calendar views.
The Sidekick 98 vCard and vCalendar features offer support for two URL protocols: http:// and file://

For information on how to use this feature, see Using vCard and vCalendar.
1. Make sure Calendar view (Daily view) is active.
2. Drag and drop the object into the Daily view.

Regards Jim
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[garybritt]

Jim, I read the help before I posted. Draging and Droping doesn't work. Nothing happens. Match fields dialogue doesn't pop up. Can someone confirm for me that they either can or can not drag and drop a vCard into their contacts with SK98?

Thanks,

Gary Britt

 

[james33]

Dear Gary,
Sorry, I thought you might have, but I always veer on the side of caution.
Sometimes after going through a long explanation in the forums it becomes clear that the person hasn't RTFM...
I should have spotted that in your first Post!
Apologies.

If you can send a sample VCard to me at:

james.maidment@oceanfree.net

I will check.
It is a long time since I used that feature and I may have been on Internet Sidekick at the time.
If it won't work I will try to find out why.

Regards Jim
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[garybritt]

Thanks Jim for you time and help on this. I'll be interested to know if there is something wrong with my setup or if it just doesn't worked as advertised. I'm running Win2k with SP4 applied. SK98 with the patch applied. To do's do forward so everything else seems to be working ok.

Thanks,

Gary Britt

 

[james33]

Dear Gary,
Seems to be a problem as I even tried associating VCards(.vcf) with the SK98 version of sidekick.exe and still no luck.
I have the file type associated with the bat on my laptop and with PalmDesktop on my desk machine and even if they aren't they still open a VCard.
I will try searching the registry to see if that can be hacked and if there is a similar key put in sidekick as in the other programs that might solve it.


Regards Jim
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[garybritt]

Jim, what operating system and service pack level are you trying this on? Out of curiosity what is "the Bat"?

Thanks for helping to clear this up.

Gary Britt

 

[james33]

Dear Gary,
The Bat! is an email program and I am on SK98 on Win98 both systems.
I still think it is a registry entry missing as there are a couple of entries under the bat and OE both of which work.
The funny thing is that when you drag the card over the card content the + comes up on your cursor as it gets over the content part but nothing happens when you release it does that happen for you?
I am going to try putting in a couple of values for Sidekick and see what happens.

BOOOM!


Regards Jim
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[garybritt]

Jim, yes I get the plus sign when dragging over the content side of a card, and just like you nothing happens. I'm glad you are having the same problem on a different op system than me. Indicates that its not my particular system setup.

Look forward to your report back regarding registry tweaks.

Gary Britt

 

[james33]

Dear Gary,
I am afraid it will have to wait a little longer as I had rather underestimated the amount of work that was on my plate lately.
I am still considering the problem in the few odd idle moments that I have though!

Regards Jim
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[ronriche]

It works the way it is designed to. Starfish thought that folks would be dragging vCard files from the browser, since that is a program that recognizes valid URL's. The vcard file must be displayed as a link in the browser pointing to an actual vcard file. Most of the systems now import them rather like CSV files.

To see it work in Sidekick 98 copy a vcard file to your root directory (to make the filename easy) and then write a quick web page with a link like

<a href=&quot;file://C:\vcard.vcf&quot;>vCard Test</a><br>

OK - here's the whole sample page

<title>vCards for Sidekick 98</title>
<meta name=&quot;generator&quot; content=&quot;NoteTab Pro 4.95&quot;>
</head>
<body>

<a href=&quot;file://C:\vcard.vcf&quot;>vCard Test</a><br>

<p>Created on December 22, 2003</p>
</body>
</html>

Display the page in your browser and drag the vcard link to the SK98 contact view. The match fields dialog will appear correctly.

Years ago many of the online services like Yahoo! would post address book entries with a vcard link just as described above. This was too simple and easy. Now they use all sort of PHP etc. and make a real hash out of the whole process. In short, if your browser does not display an actual address of a vcf file as a link then it probably can't be dragged to SK98.

-ronnie-

 

[garybritt]

Ronnie, thanks very much for the information and the html code to create dang browser page that is needed!!!!

While perhaps at the time this dragging from a browser window was a usuable method of inputing a vCard into SK98 it is difficult to understand what the programmers at Starfish were thinking when they omitted the ability to drag one in from the file manager/explorer or directly from outlook, or simply do a file/open or file/import on a vcard file and tell sk98 where the vcard file resided on your hard drive.

At least now I know how its supposed to work.

Is it just me or has the use of vcards kinda died off in the past couple of years. A few years ago is was common for me to bet a business email from somebody with a vcard attached, now this rarely happens. Is this just me or a trend for some reason?

Thanks again for your very good help on this!!!

Gary Britt

 

[ronriche]

You're right James... vcard has plain dropped out of sight with the proliferation of proprietary systems to manage business information. When importing large amounts of info CSV and other methods are much more efficient since the field name data is entered only once for all of the records rather than for every card individually. Truth is it was always meant to be used like a electronic business card, one at a time selectively and quickly. It is sort of like the difference between getting a business card or a telephone book.

I don't know why Starfish did it this way, except that it was very new at the time and they probably put it in as an afterthought and never looked at it again. There may be some ways to make it work from the file system if you could find a file manager with the option of dragging and dropping files as valid file URL's. SK98 is always ready to accept the drop into the window but seems to gag when it does not get the required format.

As an example of how it used to be done check out the website at

http://ciaweb.net/free/contact_vcard_parse.php

and drag the &quot;sample.vcf&quot; vcard from the &quot;Quick Instructions&quot; on the page. This is the way that Yahoo and many of the others used to provide vcards for their address book entries. For whatever reason they don't do this anymore.

Finally, SK98 never has had any command line options so I can understand why association would not work, but why they would not take a simple file drag and drop I don't know, unless they did not want to go through the complication of parsing spaces out of the filenames.

-ronnie-

 

[james33]

Dear Ronnie and Gary,
That was me in the other thread too Ronnie, here I imagine you are replying to Gary!

To the VCard thing; if I remember rightly a year or so ago there was talk of a security hole/exploit with Outlook and VCards / VCalendars which may have frightened people off using them.
It was a great idea as they were useful in several programs Palm Desktop / Sidekick / etc, now the new solution probably only works with Outlook.
Or am I wrong with that?

Regards Jim
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[MEdgar7863]

Thanks to all in this post, as I have noted the same problem with the vCard/vCalendar option.

I had read the help, but hadn't worked out how to show the vCards in my browser...

I don't know about the use of vCards in business, but I had thought of this as a quick way to exchange data between MS Outlook (at work) and Sidekick (at home). Lotus Organiser v5 still supports vCard and vCal, as does my Palm Desktop (unsure of version). We also have Lotus Notes v6.5 in some areas at work, and that supports vCard only.

 

[MEdgar7863]

Have been experimenting a little more, and vCal entries can be imported into Lotus Notes v6 by dropping them into the email inbox. They can then be saved to the Calendar as meetings.