Newsletters: Import Subscribers from Mac OS Contacts (Address Book)

Newsletters > Subscribers > Import/Export > Import > Mac OS Contacts (vCard file)

In order to import email addresses from your Mac OS address book into the WordPress Newsletter plugin, you’ll need to export them to a vCard file inside your Mac OS operating system.

If you prefer converting that vCard to a CSV in order to import subscribers from a CSV file, feel free to use our free vCard to CSV converter tool.

 

vCard file to Newsletter plugin subscribers

Open up your Contacts application (previously Address Book) on Mac OS. Select the titles of all the addresses which you’d like to export. Then, in your Mac OS toolbar, go to “File” > “Export” > “Export vCard…”.

You will be prompted to specify a name and location for the file which will be exported. Save it to a location where you can easily find it, since you’ll need to be able to browse for it in the next step.

With your vCard file containing the selected address book contacts, go to the Newsletters > Subscribers > Import/Export > Import section of the WordPress Newsletter plugin in your WordPress dashboard. Browse to the vCard file which has just been exported via your Mac OS Contacts application. Choose the mailing list(s) to which the subscribers should be assigned to and check the “Mac OS Contacts (vCard File)” radio button. You’ll find the full instructions below.

 

 

1. File Browser

Click the “Browse” button and navigate in the pop-up window to the file you want to import. Find the file and click “Open” you’ll see part of the location in the blank box once you have selected a file.

2. Preview of File

By default, everyone will see the email address field as it is essential to having a subscriber. You’ll also see the “Mailing List(s)” field by default, this allows you to specify a mailing list name to import subscribers to, also allowing you to create a mailing list where it isn’t available. This mailing list import will overwrite the selection initially.

However, if you have created additional fields in Newsletters > Custom Fields section, then you can import subscribers with those additional fields as well. It will show all columns in your file for mapping, and you can map them with your custom fields.

Crucial step: It is important to map the columns with both the default and custom fields or the import will fail.

3. Mailing Lists

This will show a list of your current mailing lists as checkboxes. Select the mailing list(s) you’d like to import the subscribers to. You can select multiple mailing lists.

4. Import Now

Setting this to ‘Yes‘ will display a simple visual progress. It will use an Ajax import and you can see the subscribers which import and which fail.

Setting this option to ‘No‘ means that the import will be done in a page refresh (and you might have to click the Run Now button after the refresh). Depending on the size of the file, the page may be unresponsive for some time. Please be patient for large lists.

5. File Type

This is the option to choose to import from either a CSV Spreadsheet file or a Mac OS Contacts (vCard) file. In this case, we are selecting a vCard file.

6. Prevent Autoresponders

Tick this if you do not want autoresponders to send for the subscribers in this import.

7. Require Activation

Would you like to send an activation/confirmation email to each subscriber to activate their subscription? If yes, then set to “Yes, require activation“. Otherwise, set to ‘No‘ to activate those subscribers immediately upon import.

If set to ‘Yes‘, you will be able to specify a Confirmation Email with the Require Activation option turned on. Leave as is to use the default template configured in Configuration > System Emails.

8. Update Subscribers

Tick the box to update and overwrite current subscribers.

If you have a file with empty values in it, those empty values will not overwrite existing values on those custom fields for subscribers. The existing value on a custom field will rather be kept instead of overwriting with an empty value.

9. Bounce/Unsubscribes

The system will check each subscriber and if they have previously bounced/unsubscribed, they will not be imported.

10. Import Subscribers

Once you have configured everything, simply click the button “Import Subscribers” and allow some time for the import depending on the amount of subscribers in the vCard file.

For peace of mind, you can monitor your import to see how well it does. Note: This is not shown if you set ‘No‘ for option “Import Now” when preparing the import. As seen from the image below, there is a simple visual progress bar and a list of successful and failed imports. This screen can essentially be left in its own tab/window while you continue other things on your site, it’s been coded to import at certain intervals in order not to overload any one’s server. Remember you can pause the import at any time, if needed.

1. Progress Bar

This bar shows the progress of the current import. The more full the bar the further along the import is to finishing. Note above the bar it gives you the import stats in a numerical form as well “38 (4 failed) out of 846”.

2.  Stop/resume Buttons

If at anytime you need to stop the import, clicking the “Stop” button will pause the import. Later on you can just resume the import by clicking the blue “Resume Import” button which takes place of the blue “Importing Now” button. Resuming will pick up where you left off.

3. Subscribers Imported

This is a simple list really, as a subscriber is added to your newsletter plugin from the vCard they will be listed in the box there.

4. Subscribers Failed

This is actually almost the same as the “subscribers import” .When subscriber imports fails it will show in the list there, sometimes with an error to indicate why it has failed. Most of the time it will be because of the email address having odd characters and is therefore not valid to add as a subscriber.

 

 

Import subscribers from vCard file