Address Book Blues

Now the G4 iMac OS 10.2.8 and G4 iBook OS 10.3.9 have been joined by a MacBookPro OS 10.8.3.

Moving Address Book from iBook to MacBookPro was OK, just exporting Groups of addresses as vCards.

BUT trying the same approach with the older iMac has given me loads of trouble.
Using the Address Book 3.0.3 (v225) to try to export addresses and/or Groups fails most of the time, with the Spinning BBOD and the Address Book pleading in red for 'Force Quit'.

The most I have managed is a Group of 6 addresses in one card.
Often even trying to export just one address on one card fails.

Is there some cunning way I can transfer the contents of the old Address Book on the iMac to the MacBookPro without going through the 'Export vCard...' stage?

If not, I will have to transfer each address manually.

That manual method would be eased if there was a way of copying the old Address Book on the iMac into a text file.
Is that within the bounds of possibility?

Looking forward to a reply.

PS Other than the above problem, the MacBookPro is very impressive.

If you select all the entries then go File Export Vcard a file will be created with all the entries in it.

Then copy file to new machine and double click on the file on the new machine and it will offer to import the file into Contacts.

In reply to a post by DRW:

If you select all the entries then go File Export Vcard a file will be created with all the entries in it.

Then copy file to new machine and double click on the file on the new machine and it will offer to import the file into Contacts.

Thanks for the suggestion.
Unfortunately that is what I have tried to do but without success.
I just get the SBBOD and Address Book just goes into 'not responding' mode and has to be 'Force Quit'.

Strangely 2 other users on the same iMac seem to be able to export vCards OK.
All users use the same Application Address Book, so I can only assume that some of the addresses in my Address Book have become corrupted in some way.

Looks like I will just have to slog away for each individual address entry.