Recoving Contacts from a Mac Time Machine into a PC

Question

I recently had my Mac break down on me and it was way to expensive to fix. I decided to take an inexpensive HP/windows 7 for the time being. I have a ton of contacts in my address book of the Mac but I need to somehow get those contacts from the time machine backup into my Microsoft Outlook on my PC. Does anyone know how to do this?

Answer 1

AFAIK you really need a Mac to mount the Time Machine Disk.

But you may be lucky: Do you know how your Time Machine Disk was formatted? Fat32? HFS+?

If it's Fat32 i think TM created a so called sparsebundle (some kind of growing disk image) that can only be opened with a Mac (Or OS X installed in Virtual Box...). If it's HFS+ i think TM uses the Disk without creating a Disk Image. But i'm not sure.

You should try to access your disk and tell us what you can see there. If there's a .sparsebundle file/folder you are SOOL. Otherwise (if you can't access the disk at all) you may try to install some HFS+ driver or tool to access you backups.

Then it's just a matter of copying and converting the Addressbook entries. ... For which you may need a mac...?

Answer 2

Sorry to hear your mac is down, but it's a life...

Ok,

Time machine does not support FAT32, or I've just missed something?:)

Well, to extract your contact from time machine archive:

1. Software "Back-in-Time" http://www.tri-edre.fr/english/backintime.html
2. ANY mac (yours, your friend etc)
3. On spare MAC I do recommend you create fresh account to prevent affection and conclusion:) Install software, connect drive with Time Machine backup (You do need provide your OLD! MAC account password to get into time machine backup)

4. Explore your contacts folder in time machine backup and copy it to temporary location (USB stick) but formatted with FAT32

5. Use that one: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/29681 to convert your address book to .SCV file.

6. Import .SCV file in to your outlook.

Done

Or second way: After extraction your contacts from Time Machine. use gmail as donor for your contacts.

But lajuette absolutely right, you do need mac to work on this issue

Hope it helps