Limitations
If you plan to use LDAP as an MS Outlook Address Book please be aware of the following limitations:
Read only access
MS Outlook clients have only read access to the LDAP database. This means that another tool must be used to add/update data in an LDAP database.
No support for e-mail lists
There is no support for such feature when using an LDAP database (if someone knows a way how to do it post here).
It's not a GAL replacement
Because of the listed problems and other diferences in behaviour LDAP will never replace the Global Address List facility found in Windows/Exchange when used in combination with MS Outlook clients.
Attribute maping
This information is important when you want to migrate data to an LDAP database.
Not all MS Outlook attributes are supported.
MS Outlook and LDAP
The following table describes the maping of attribute names between LDAP and Microsoft Outlook.
MS Outlook will look for the following attributes:
| Outlook name | LDAP name |
|---|---|
| Personal data | |
| Name Display | cn [display-name] |
| First Name | givenName |
| Middle Name | initials |
| Last Name | sn |
| Addresses | |
| Home - Street Address | homePostalAddress |
| Home - Phone | homePhone |
| Home - Fax | otherFacsimileTelephoneNumber |
| Mobile | mobile |
| Company data | |
| Company Name | o [organizationName] |
| Job Title | title |
| Department | department [organizationalUnitName, ou] |
| Addresses | |
| Business - Office | physicalDeliveryOfficeName |
| Business - Street Address | postalAddress [street, streetAddress] |
| Business - City | l [Locality] |
| Business - State/Province | st |
| Business - Zip Code | postalCode |
| Business - Country/Region | c [co, countryName] |
| Business - Fax | facsimileTelephoneNumber [officeFAX] |
| Business - Phone | telephoneNumber |
| Internet addresses | |
| Email Address | |
| Business Web Page | URL |
| Other data | |
| Notes | comment [info] |
| Manager | Manager in DN format, double clickable to go to corresponding entry |
| Reports | Reports |
| (white space) | labeledURI |
| Telephone-Assistant Telephone-Office2 |
|
More information can be found at this link.
Vcard and LDAP
In case you have your data in VCARD format here is the maping to be used between VCARD and LDAP.
You will have to use a tool that does the transformation between vcard → LDIF format.
| Vcard attribute | LDAP name |
|---|---|
| N: | cn |
| FN: | title |
| ORG: | o |
| TITLE: | title |
| TEL;WORK;VOICE: | telephoneNumber |
| TEL;HOME;VOICE: TEL;VOICE: | homePhone |
| TEL;CELL;VOICE: | mobile |
| TEL;WORK;FAX: | facsimileTelephoneNumber |
| ADR;WORK: Has the following structure FIELD1;FIELD2;FIELD3;FIELD4;FIELD5;FIELD6;FIELD7 |
|
| FIELD1 | UNKNOWN |
| FIELD2 | UNKNOWN |
| FIELD3 | postalAddress |
| FIELD4 | l |
| FIELD5 | st |
| FIELD6 | postalCode |
| FIELD7 | c |
| EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET: | |
| URL;WORK: | URL |
| OTHER | |
| LABEL;WORK: | comment |
LABEL;WORK;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE: =0D=0A used for new lines | comment |
The following attributes in the vcard file can be safely ignored (contain no valuable data):
BEGIN, VERSION, REV, END.
Migrate MS Exchange data
ldifde
Is an utility shiped with MS Windows 2000 Server (but not Professional).
MS knowledge base article 237677 explains how to do it.
This article.
Communigate migration tools
See the Communigate migration tool page for more information on how to perform this step.
Other migration utilities
We list here other migration utilities not related to LDAP in particular.
You can use these tools to migrate e-mail data, contacts, notes. The contact data can be later moved to an LDAP database if needed.
Outlook data migration
A good tool for this is Outport.
It allows to extract e-mail data from Outlook directories into different formats that can be later imported by Thunderbird, Evolution and other PIM clients.
