Data missing when contacts are imported/exported

[storm]

Users often rely upon Zimbra's import/export feature to backup their contacts.

This is particularly important when one has 1000s or more - no-one wishes to lose 1000s of contacts photos and tags, clearly.

Currently lots of data is lost - contact photos and tags are not exported or imported when exporting/importing (using the 'Account' filter).


Vote here to get these bugs moving:

Allow photo import/export:
https://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=57327

Allow tags import/export:
https://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=33842


Adding support for tags would be trivial (support is already built-in to the system and the Yahoo filter already supports tags/categories - all Zimbra developers need to do is add the term to the import/export filter files).

Any ideas on the best way to import/export contact photos?

[vmahajan]

In the meanwhile you can try the Attach Contacts | Zimbra :: Gallery zimlet which enables you to forward contacts in an email.

[storm]

Thank you for the link.

Indeed the Attach Contact zimlet can indeed be useful, the suggestion is appreciated.

However it should be noted that

The Attach Contact Zimlet doesn't backup all fields, unlike CSV file backup (it use Zimbra's vCards).

Zimbra's vCards currently destroy a lot of data - such as: multiple URL fields; multiple addresses; ALL Company phone numbers; multiple IM addresses; multiple mobile numbers; and ALL custom field data!

See my attachment at: https://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=59352

Also, it's not really practical if you're dealing with thousands.

Fixing the bugs I've linked to is essential and I hope will be targetted for Helix - enterprise users who use contact export to backup (as recommended in Zimbra documentation) expect their data to be backed-up, they don't expect to later realise a lot of data is missing).
Fixing those bugs would be trivial. (Especially simply adding a Category field in contact export).