The Answer Gang

Re: Linux solution to syncing with Exchange Address books as a client

From Alan Maddison (published in 2c Tips, Issue 68)

Answered By Anthony E. Greene

I hope that you can help me find a solution before I'm forced back to NT. I have to find a Linux solution that will allow me to connect to an Exchange server over the WAN and then sync address books.

[Anthony] The closest thing I can think of for this is to configure your standards-compliant mail client to access the Exchange Global Address List (GAL) via LDAP. This is a built-in capability of Exchange server that often goes unused. If the LDAP interface is enabled, you can get to the Exchange GAL using the LDAP abilities in Netscape, Pine, Balsa, Eudora, Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Address Book (part of Outlook Express). The latest version of Mozilla may also support LDAP.

If you want to export the GAL for use in an LDAP server, you will need both Outlook and Outlook Express installed.

• Open Outlook.
• Open the Address Book and select the Global Address List
• In the Global Address List, select all the addresses you want to export and copy them to your Personal Address Book. This is a memory and CPU intensive process. I would advise selecting 100-200 or so at a time. Do not select distribution lists; they are not exportable.
• After all the desired addresses have been copied to your Personal Address Book, leave Outlook open and open Outlook Express.
• Select File->Import to import addresses from your Outlook Personal Address Book.
• After the import is complete, close Outlook.
• Select File-> Export to export your address book to a comma separated values (CSV) formatted text file. I will assumed you exported the following fields: Name, First Name, Last Name, Title, Organization, Department, Email Address, Phone, and Fax.
• After the export is complete, copy the CSV file to a box with Perl installed and run the following script (csv2ldif.pl):

See attached csv2ldif.pl.txt

Take the resulting LDIF file and import it into your LDAP server using its import tools.

Tony

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