Software :: Find And Replace Or Batch Change In Address Book?

I'm looking to convert a whole slew of telephone numbers in Address Book to make them Skype compliant. There are a variety of find-replace patterns I want to use. One example is an area code in parentheses. For example, I want to change (215) to +1 215. There are thousands of numbers in my address book to change, and manually is not an option. Address Book doesn't have any way to do this on its own. I checked out Automator but it doesn't have many useful Address Book functions. I dug around for a bit online for an AppleScript that would just go straight to editing the AddressBook.data file, but didn't find anything.

I tried to edit the AddressBook.data file myself using TextWrangler, but when I saved it, AddressBook.data's icon changed from a blank file icon to a plain text file icon and Address Book stalled out while opening, necessitating a force quit. So I reverted to my back up and am no closer to solving the problem. Is there a way to do a find-replace or a batch change in Address Book, whetever via AppleScript or otherwise? If not, how can I edit AddressBook.data and save it without it become a text file that Address Book chokes on?