Export Exchange contacts without using Outlook

Question

I am trying to export my Exchange contacts (contacts, not the built-in Exchange address book of everyone in my organization). The account syncs with my iPhone, and I have access to the account's webmail. I also have access to the Exchange Services areas of our webhost. The only thing I do not have is access to this account through an instance of Outlook, simply due to where I happen to be this week and what computers I have on hand.

Is there a way for me to export these contacts, whether as vCards or just as a .csv file or something, without using the Outlook software?

(Update: In another question, there was an answer that suggested using an app called Funambol to sync my iPhone contacts onto their cloud. I tried this, but was unsuccessful for two reasons: first, that I couldn't easily see a way to download all of my contacts from their interface; second, that it dumped both my Exchange contacts and my Gmail contacts into the same list, which is not ideal.)

(I can access the Exchange account through an instance of Mail.app on OSX, if that inspires anyone to suggest a workaround.)

('Nother Update: Since I have access to an OSX system, I was able to set up Address Book.app to sync with the Exchange account and use that to export all the contacts as vCards. I am leaving the question as-yet-unanswered because I'm interested in solutions someone who doesn't happen to own a Mac or an Outlook license might be able to use.)

Let me make this more succinct:

Now that my particular problem is solved, is there a "general solution" to this problem, wherein most anyone on most any system could nab their Exchange contacts using only free (as in beer) software?

Solution

DAVMail allows you to access your OWA account through Thunderbird. You can configure it for either an IMAP or POP client. If you want the same file structure (folders and email locations) then you'll want to use IMAP. If you want a downloaded copy of the email to your Thunderbird client and leave the server alone, then you'll want to use POP.

Other features such as calendars and other items are available through the Getting Started link below.

http://davmail.sourceforge.net/gettingstarted.html

Below is the link for the Contact Address book setup

http://davmail.sourceforge.net/thunderbirdcarddavsetup.html

Once you have the contacts available within Thunderbird, open the Address Book, select the appropriate list of contacts (e.g. the one created using the above method) then use the Tools/Export... to export the list of contacts.

Comments

[kobaltz]

In your iTunes, you can select it to sync with gmail. See if the sync groups the contacts and then just export the group you need.

[Admin]

As I just noted in my original question, Address Book easily let me export a whole list of contacts into a vCard file, once I got it hooked up to my Exchange account. This is the Mac solution, definitely. Would still be interested in a general solution, however.

[Admin]

Ah! iTunes! I did forget about iTunes. This is the closest thing I can think of to a solution anyone can use with free, readily available software. This is the iPhone solution, definitely. Am still wondering about a general solution.

[surfasb]

What would you like the exported format to be? AFAIK, all the major PIMs import vCards.

[kobaltz]

Is there a reason why you cannot use Outlook to export your contacts? You should be able to group them and sort based on local contacts vs company directory ones. If you're unable to use Outlook due to not being in the domain, you are able to use DAVMAIL and Thunderbird which will let you have IMAP/POP access in Thunderbird through the OWA Access.

[Admin]

I KNEW I was overcomplicating the matter. If you edit your answer or make a new one with the Thunderbird solution, that'll be the accepted. I was rejecting Outlook as a solution because it's nonfree, and I was asking from the perspective of someone who needs to extract their work contacts via a personal computer, for free.